FWIW, I've been using Groovy for this purpose to encapsulate processes in *Nix and Windows. Not perfect, not lightweight, but happens to get the job done.
Apache Groovy's perfect for these kind of tasks where it doesn't need to be lightweight. Just don't use it for building actual applications -- build them in a decent typed language like Java, Scala, or Kotlin, then use Groovy as a multi-OS version of Bash to automate builds, tests, and runs.
