> I studied some a few years ago and concluded that it
> was not worth the trouble.
"Boost C++ Libraries" uses perforce jam ( in their case it's
modified
jam: bjam http://www.boost.org/doc/tools/jam/index.html ). Jam works
well with massive structures of autonomous projects that constitute a
collection of libraries and must be built on multiple platforms and
with different tools. It may be a project on its own to create a
robust build system of jamfiles, but once it's done, it's very easy to
maintain (which can be said about any well-designed system :-)
