"just" is not a better make, it is, well, just a command runner.
Make is designed, well, to make stuff, it is a build system. But now, it is showing its age as a build system, and other, more advanced systems have taken over, these are the "better make" [1]. But it turns out that make is flexible and can be used for other things, namely running commands, and it has been rather popular for this. Problem is, make is still a build system at its core, and it has some quirks that make it less than ideal as a simple command runner, notably the ".PHONY" target. Just is like make, but it is explicitly not a build system, which allows it to do away with most of these quirks.
So is it a "better make"? As a build system, no, it is intentionally a "worse make", but as "just a command runner", then it is indeed a "better make", and I am not aware of a similar project.
Make is designed, well, to make stuff, it is a build system. But now, it is showing its age as a build system, and other, more advanced systems have taken over, these are the "better make" [1]. But it turns out that make is flexible and can be used for other things, namely running commands, and it has been rather popular for this. Problem is, make is still a build system at its core, and it has some quirks that make it less than ideal as a simple command runner, notably the ".PHONY" target. Just is like make, but it is explicitly not a build system, which allows it to do away with most of these quirks.
So is it a "better make"? As a build system, no, it is intentionally a "worse make", but as "just a command runner", then it is indeed a "better make", and I am not aware of a similar project.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_build_automation_softw...