I am quite certain to have used such kind of tooling during 1990's, with ads on The C/C++ Users Journal and Dr. Dobbs developer magazines.

It wouldn't have been Matthias Andrée's makel, then.

* https://git.maandree.se/makel

Or unmake.

* https://crates.io/crates/unmake

Or checkmake.

* https://github.com/checkmake/checkmake (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32460375)

Or make-audit.

* https://github.com/david-a-wheeler/make-audit

Or the Sublime linter for makefiles.

* https://github.com/giampaolo/SublimeLinter-contrib-makefile

It hasn't taken quite the 50 years that we are told, has it? (-: