Makepp is a drop-in replacement for GNU make which has a number of features that allow for more reliable builds and simpler build files. It supports almost all of the syntax that GNU make supports, and can be used with makefiles produced by utilities such as automake. It is called makepp (or make++) because it was designed for building C++ programs. Also its relationship to make is supposed to be analogous to C++'s relationship to C: it is almost 100% backward compatible but adds a number of new features.