SCons is listed as a meta build system here, but it is clearly an end-to-end build system. It seems to me SCons even fits all the requirements listed by the author. Plus, you program your SCons build using Python.
He also describes the dynamic discovery of header dependencies of Ninja as a hack. It is true that it is a special case to handle a specific type of dynamic dependencies. But the basic idea behind it (using the compiler's diagnostic as the source of truth) is sane and efficient. The alternative is to scan the sources using a custom parser, which is slower and more fragile.
Rust strings enforce utf-8 encoding, yes. However, it seems Windows (which uses utf-16) allows ill-formed UTF-16, in particular it tolerates unpaired surrogates.
I saw this "shortcut" used in code snippets, on online JS/CSS/HTML editors like JSFiddle. It did not even occur to me this was part of JS spec, I thought the editor was generating code behind my back!
He also describes the dynamic discovery of header dependencies of Ninja as a hack. It is true that it is a special case to handle a specific type of dynamic dependencies. But the basic idea behind it (using the compiler's diagnostic as the source of truth) is sane and efficient. The alternative is to scan the sources using a custom parser, which is slower and more fragile.