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As the title says, I want to have a build tool that quite much stays out of my way.

I would rather want to specify rules, rather than steps in the build process. I wan to say that I want a binary file with a name placed in the root directory of my project, .o files should go in an obj/tmp dir and the source is in the Source-directory.

I do NOT want to tell it that it is this'n'that file as I keep adding new files rather quickly, it should just scan the source directory (and its subdirectories) looking for Ragel (.rl) and C++ code (.cxx) and doing what's necessary to make all into an executable.

I have looked into many tools, like auto{make,conf,header} (Did not really like that I placed the files it wanted in a subdir of project root, eclipse did not like that either), CMake (Seems like I have to add all source-files myself, and is quite much a variation of autotools in my eyes). I have also read about ant, maven (I am also allergic against XML, it's a good format to serialize data for applications, not so much for humans. I would prefer YAML) and others on WikiPedia. And I have seen tools which seems good but which require to be set up as a webserver which is kinda overkill.

Also, I really need the ability to be able to work offline without internet connection!.

Right now it seems like the best option is to make a little script that finds all .cxx files and write an Unity.cxx and builds that one with G++, which probably is quite fast but to much an ugly hack, I guess.

Bonus Points:

  1. Fast builds
  2. Ability to type build test-1 or something and it will build and directly run test-1
  3. Multi-core builds (i.e. faster builds)
  4. Does really not interrupt my train of thought
Frank
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    I'm not qualified to answer at all, but I came across this in the Varnish documentation. You may find it edifying (but not helpful): https://www.varnish-cache.org/docs/3.0/phk/autocrap.html – mqsoh Aug 13 '11 at 03:43

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CMake is great. It's free, cross-platform, and reasonably well documented. It supports "out of source builds", meaning none of the build files are placed in the source directory. That makes source control a bit easier. It can be set up to find new files (globbing). Fast?...It generates make files...after that it's up to your compiler. Multicore...again, more a function of the compiler. I've used CMake on Windows, Linux, and Mac...it just works.

Another that I haven't tried but have read about and plan to test is premake... http://industriousone.com/sample-script

dgnorton
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cake from CoffeeScript is quite good, and I'm writing a similar tool using Lua myself.

CMake and premake Ain't build/maketools, they are build/make-descriptor generators; which may fit a large number of projects that ain't changing too much. But not for project where rapid prototyping is a key.

Right now, I'm doing a project where the browser updates when you hit the save-button in your text editor; You do not need to go to the browser and hit F5 (Which would cause a small delay while the browser load in everything again, and you would most likely loose the state of the page, like say that you have an menu open, and wish to tweak the look of the menu. You would be forced to navigate there again in your RIA).

Frank
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