I just created a dub package. Frankly, the whole thign is backward.

[Sönke Ludwig]

 > my way or the highway attitude

Just view it from the other side: You are typically publishing a package 
for an audience to use. If you insist on using your own choice of build 
system, you also dictate that upon the users of your package - forcing 
them to install and use that system, as well as forcing custom 
integration of any build artifacts into development dependencies (aka 
C/C++ dependency hell).

Having said that, you can define a custom command to run make if you 
really want to.

The way versions are managed is very convenient for publishing if DUB is 
your primary target, but may admittedly get in the way if you have other 
systems. Nothing, except the need to put the necessary work into the 
registry, speaks against supporting other mechanisms, though.

This applies to many of the current shortcomings, such as the error 
diagnostics when adding packages. A lot of things are not meant to be 
limitations, but simply represent what people were willing to invest or 
deemed sufficient.