savant, jam and buildmgic  are all based on ant.

the problem with ant is that it requires me to role my own dependencies
and bundling targets. i want something that's already working.

Hello,

We are currently developping a build tool that exactly has these
features, because we haven't found any existing open-source tool that
fits these requirements.

A project (potentially composed of different modules (i.e. source
directory) and supporting different artifacts) is described in one xml
file (the only file you have to write), and the build tool then
automatically generates ant files.  We can therefore benefit from the
power of ant while not having the problem of writing complex ant build
files.

This new build system is likely to be released in open-source soon (ie.
in the next weeks).  I'll inform you on this forum when it'll be ready
(or you can contact me if you don't see the announcement).

Cheers,

Jacques-Olivier