I have tried:
- scons <--- Too slow.
- waf <--- Pretty good, but overengineered in my opinion. Sometimes not easy to guess what to do.
- cmake <--- Not nice syntax, but pretty robust and quite fast.
- autotools (mythbuster docs) <--- Only unix. Best handling cross-compilation.
- tup <-- It is so fast and correct that it is unbelievable.
You are looking for industrial strength. I would say that scons is out, because it is too slow IMHO, even if it was nice. It does not have a config phase either.
waf looks good, but I found fighting how to do a few things, specially nested projects, in the correct way.
autotools is REALLY robust, though it is out if you want to support windows. Cross compilation is really robust in autotools.
CMake: I think you should go for this one. It is quite fast, it handles configuration just as autotools but works in windows, it generates projects for xcode, visual studio, make and more. This is a nice feature if you have a multi-platform project since you can generate the projects for the IDEs of choice. But I must say that I don't like the syntax too much. Anyway, it handles big projects well. I would go for cmake if I wanted an "industrial strength" solution. Even if I personally hate it a bit, it is the only viable option.
Tup: I think it is more unix-oriented. But I must say that for me it is the nicest one and it is insanely fast and simple. I love it. But what you need is cmake.
