... which is of course addressing make as merely a "build tool" for "projects".

One of the normal conventions for Daniel J. Bernstein's tinydns is to use make. No "projects" or "builds" are involved. The goal is not to create a program. Rather, make is used to ensure that the binary form of the DNS database is re-built whenever the system administrator has edited the text form. The administrator simply has to remember to run "make", and the Makefile re-builds, and atomically publishes, the new DNS database.

The simplest makefiles are of the scale exhibited at http://cr.yp.to/djbdns/run-server.html

But one can create significantly more ambitious makefiles than those. (-: