Bell Labs had a simpler alternative in IFFE [0], that consisted of a single shell script [1]. You would specify any required headers, libraries and tests in a simple text file [2].

[0] https://www.cs.tufts.edu/~nr/cs257/archive/glenn-fowler/iffe...

[1] https://github.com/att/ast/blob/master/src/cmd/INIT/iffe.sh

[2] https://github.com/att/ast/blob/master/src/cmd/3d/features/s...