Does Perl need an answer to (GNU) make? Was there a challenge? My experience so far with ant is that's just make with an XML syntax (meaning that you need lots of keystrokes to do something simple).

There are tools to generate make files for you - ExtUtils::MakeMaker for instance. Configure (as found in the Perl source distribution) and configure (found in many other software distros) are others. And there are even tools to write configure files: autoconf and metaconf (Larry Wall authored one).

Note that make is language agnostic. It has a long list of language specific default rules, and it might have originally be written to compile C programs, but I have used make to compile C, Pascal, C++, generate GIF and JPEG images, generate documentation in man, PostScript, POD and PDF format, build file systems, and to build complete Linux distros. And then I forget more than half of the things I've use make for. Now, in all cases, the make I've used was written in C, but it might as well have been written in Java or Perl - the effect would have been the same.

make is a tool, an excellent tool, and in my toolbox it ranks a close second to Perl (but it would be harder to replace than Perl).

There's no need for a "Perl answer to GNU Make". Just as there's no need for a "Perl answer to Emacs", or a "Perl answer to horse racing".

If there's one thing that might be seen as a partial answer to make, it's Module::Build. But as the name suggests, it's geared towards building Perl modules.