The yamake tool is currently a Python script that uses YAML files to replace platform-specific Makefiles and scripts. It is meant for lightweight, but flexible dependency tracking, easy to integrate into projects that need the logic for whatever purpose, rather than replace make, cmake, ninja, meson, etc.

Only the dependency tracking functionality is currently enabled. It is lightweight and built for extensibility, and its primary advantage over make apart from cleaner syntax and cross-platform potential is that its targets have both dependencies and provides, and this allows for a duck-typing style of abstraction over any means of establishing mtime or readiness. The first test use case is managing Witcher 3 mods on Linux, but the tool isn't specific to that use case.

The next test case, for the unit test framework, is a build dependency version of Monty Python's Confuse-A-Cat. It's a surprisingly tricky scenario with all the other animal confusion agencies around to muscle in on the domestic cat market.

A yamake_config.yaml file is optional at the current working directory, or in ~/.config - or it can be manually specified. It should contain all variables specific to the user's machine, which are referenced in the yamake.yaml which should be usable to anyone with the layers directory and git repo initialized.

Handlers imported as plugins are specified in the configuration file, and they are intended to contain both optional expansions of the dependency tracking, and also any function that manipulate the data or write to disk. This is so that the YAML can be coupled to implementations of extensions referenced in their structure.