actually looks very similar to Meson [https://mesonbuild.com/], which is getting a lot of traction in FOSS [https://mesonbuild.com/Users.html]
e.g. from their docs:
project('sdldemo', 'c',
default_options: 'default_library=static')
sdl2_dep = dependency('sdl2')
sdl2_main_dep = dependency('sdl2main')
executable('sdlprog', 'sdlprog.c',
win_subsystem: 'windows',
dependencies: [sdl2_dep, sdl2_main_dep])
Meson is a python layer over the ninja builder, like cmake can be. xmake is both a build tool and a package manager fast like ninja and has no DSL, the build file is just lua. It's more like cargo than meson is.
I didn't claim it was a package manager, just that it looked similar. The root post said "build tool", and that's what Meson is as well.
Other than that, both "python layer" and "over the ninja builder" are technically wrong. "python layer" is off since there is now a second implementation, Muon [https://muon.build/], in C. "over the ninja builder" is off since it can also use Visual Studio's build capabilities on Windows.
Interestingly, I'm unaware of other build-related systems that have multiple implementations, except Make (which is in fact part of the POSIX.1 standard.) Curious to know if there are any others.