I agree that mk is very good and better than make, and also that it is
not radically different from make. Same thing goes for rc, it is very
good and better than Bourne shell (/bin/sh), but not radically
different. If you are looking for a radically different approach to
building, have you considered redo? [1][2]
Yes, you can include shell script code inside a makefile, or makefile
code inside a shell script (as you demonstrated).
> I'd like to read about rc and 9base. Could you give some reference?
See [3][4][5].
Note that 9base includes both rc and mk. Note that you can direct mk to
use Bourne shell or mk as you like(see man page for MKSHELL). Note also
that mk has the facility to include dynamic information (see <| and `{
in the man page).