LaTeX-Dep is a latex dependency calculator. Together with the included makefile it provides an easy way to build latex projects.
Using LaTeX-Dep the makefile for a typical complex LaTeX project looks like this:
# the main latex file MAIN_TEX = example.tex include /usr/share/latex-dep/latex.mk
Everything that is necessary to build the outputs is automagically done by LaTeX-Dep. BibTeX, MakeIndex and LaTeX are run as many times as necessary to create and resolve all references.