I asked about build tools for D on the mailing list a while ago. I
needed a solution that allowed me to mix C++ and D builds in a
cross-platform way with minimum fuss. You can find the discussion about
it here
<http://www.digitalmars.com/d/archives/digitalmars/D/Best_build_tool_for_D_projects_136103.html>
(you were also a part of it IIRC). My biggest requirement at the time was:
* Keeping platform checks e.g. IF (MAC) {} ELSE IF(LINUX) {} ... etc.
to an absolute minimum. What's the point in a cross-platform
language if when you build projects in it you need to write a short
essay for the build system...
* Pre-built binaries available to all platforms (or as many as possible).
In the end I settled for Jam (ftjam)
<http://www.freetype.org/jam/index.html>, it works tremendously well.
It's easy to get binaries for almost any operating system (especially
with projects like homebrew <http://mxcl.github.com/homebrew/> for Mac).
I have very few gripes with it:
* The build description language is very simple (once you fully grok
it), but could have done with a lot more example-based documentation.
* It's missing a few features like recursive-directory scanning (for
source files), and the ability to pipe the output from a program
into a variable in the build script (e.g. C++FLAGS = `llvm-config
--cxxflags`).
* A convenient way to force all generated object and library files
into a dedicated build folder. It's possible but not very easy to do.
* I'm a big fan of convention over configuration, I know it's a very
subjective topic but I like the way Maven3 and Gradle assume a
project structure (that you can deviate from if you need to). This
usually requires very good supporting documentation.
The build script I put together for my project looked like this,
http://mysticpaste.com/private/TCcTE6KGxn .
Hope this helps,
Chris
On 07/13/11 02:02, Nick Sabalausky wrote:
The recent discussions about package managers and buildsystems has prompted
me to get off my ass (or rather, *on* my ass as per how programming is
usually performed...) and start on the D-based rake-inspired buildtool I've
been meaning to make for awhile now. It's not actually usable yet, but
there's a sample drakefile demonstrating everything, and it does actually
compile and run (but just doesn't build the dependency tree or actually run
any of the build steps). *Should* work on Posix, but I only tested on
Windows, so I may have fucked up the Posix version...
Apologies to Jacob Carlborg for the name being so close to "dake". Didn't
really know what else to call it ("Duck", maybe?) Like dake, it's inspired
by Ruby's Rake. But unlike dake, the buildscript is written in D instead of
Ruby, which was my #1 reason for making a Rake alternative.
Before I go implemeting everything, I'd like to get input on it. Is it
something that could be a major D tool?
Overview of Drake and links to all the code are here:
https://bitbucket.org/Abscissa256/drake/wiki/Home
