Is there a modern cross platform task runner, like make, for running simple scripts?

Question

I have some build, test, etc scripts written in various interpreted languages but in Windows Powershell or cmd you cannot invoke a script directly from the command line.

# Rather than
./build

# On Windows I have to specify
python .\build

Obviously in *nix you can mark something as executable with chmod +x ./build and use a shebang to select the interpreter - something unavailable in Windows.

This is frustrating to some extent because I would like to keep the calling of said scripts consistent. Previously I used make as it has a release for Windows, that way I could specify the interpreter within the makefile:

# Works in MacOS, Windows, Linux
make build

# makefile
.PHONY: build

build:
  go run ./.scripts/build.go

But the installation of make is a little cumbersome on Windows and I believe it's unmaintained. It's difficult to pass arguments to the target command and the keyword also doesn't always make sense where you might specify a task, rather than a command to "make" something, like

make run-http-server
make run-hot-reload-web

Is there a modern task runner that is cross platform, maintained, easy to install and with a command keyword that make sense in the context of running commands?

e.g.

run-task hot-reload --flag
rt hot-reload --flag

Answer 1

This is a very late answer and it is doubtful it is still useful for you, but while looking for an answer to this question myself, I encountered go-task

Alternatively, installing Make with Chocolatey could be an option and not at all cumbersome.