A question regarding stepmake

[Eric Bavier]

Hello Lilypond devs,

I've recently been trying to package lilypond for GNU Guix but haven't been
able to successfully build it (I've looked at both 2.16 and 2.18).

I'm not very familiar with the development history of lilypond, so while
trying to sort through the lilypond build one question came to mind: why
does lilypond use stepmake?

I know buildsystems can be a touchy subject amongst programmers, so I don't
mean to be critical; I'm just curious.  Are there things that automake can't
do (I mention automake because most GNU contributors are familiar with it)?

`~Eric