Creating an advanced build system

[Brendan Heading]

Hi,

I've got a source tree out of which I need to build several link 
libraries, and several executables. To make things tricky, some (but not 
all) of the link libraries are common among several (but not all) of the 
executables. The source code for each library and executable resides in 
a series of different directories. Of course, I'd like to use the 
excellent GNU Make to do this, and I'd like to avoid where possible 
building anything that is unnecessary.

I do know how to write Makefiles well, but my best efforts have involved 
doing a lot of recursive makes which the conventional wisdom these days 
seems to say is a bad thing. Therefore I'd like to try to build some or 
all of the targets by invoking make just once on one top-level file.

Are there any "best way to write a makefile for a large project" type 
documents available ?

Brendan