C++ build systems [closed]

Answer 1

I don't have experience with the others, but if you're looking for a cross-platform, cross-toolchain build system, use CMake. CMake is not actually a build system, it's a build script generator - it generates the actual build scripts for a lot of build systems and (and that's in my opinion the strength) generates project files for major IDEs like Visual Studio and KDevelop. Recent KDevelop versions, by the way, have Intellisense for CMake files.

The generated build scripts or Visual Studio solutions are not as elegant as they would be if created manually, but since you also don't have to maintain them manually, it's fine.

The downside of CMake is that it doesn't really come with a lot of built-in tools, or an easy way to extend it (compared to e.g. MSBuild, which is of course just a build system, not a generator). Our Linux developers tend to call Unix command line tools to do things like compression/decompression, which are not available on a typical Windows installation, while in contrast MSBuild has thousands of additional commands available from community projects, so you don't need to use the command line, and it's really easy to create a new Task for MSBuild. I'm currently looking into how to get around these limitations for CMake, because it currently means we can't entirely build on Windows, even though the code itself would build fine.

Writing the CMake files is not a beautiful experience, but it's ok. The language has some strange quirks (like having to exactly repeat an if-condition in the else and endif, which will drive you crazy especially when experimenting), and you'll really, really hate having a file called CMakeLists.txt in each and every directory which has custom build rules (and that maybe a lot, in a large project), and they all show up just with the name in your IDE ;)

Answer 2

I had a chance to compare all of them myself. First we've used make. It is ugly. You have to be make expert to really understand what's going on. I wouldn't take the pain ever again.

Then we moved to SCons. It's syntax is OK, you can still do ugly things because you can write your own scripts which tend to be programs. This gives you a lot of flexibility. But we kicked SCons because we had to wait for about 20 seconds for project scan and another 20 for build every time. Then my colleges wrote python code to cache it's scan results to files and almost doubled the performance. You still had to wait about 20sec for a build, when you've added a file or removed one from the project you had to rerun build with a --fill-cache parameter.

Then I've moved the project to CMake which is definitely my tool of choice. It's structure and syntax a very well readable and also documented. It generates you projects for almost every IDE and also early supports the new IDEs on the market. The build process is then as fast as your IDE and you only need to return to CMake when you add new projects or change project properties to stay with CMake

So I would suggest CMake

Answer 3

I have tried:

1. scons <--- Too slow.
2. waf <--- Pretty good, but overengineered in my opinion. Sometimes not easy to guess what to do.
3. cmake <--- Not nice syntax, but pretty robust and quite fast.
4. autotools (mythbuster docs) <--- Only unix. Best handling cross-compilation.
5. tup <-- It is so fast and correct that it is unbelievable.

You are looking for industrial strength. I would say that scons is out, because it is too slow IMHO, even if it was nice. It does not have a config phase either.

waf looks good, but I found fighting how to do a few things, specially nested projects, in the correct way.

autotools is REALLY robust, though it is out if you want to support windows. Cross compilation is really robust in autotools.

CMake: I think you should go for this one. It is quite fast, it handles configuration just as autotools but works in windows, it generates projects for xcode, visual studio, make and more. This is a nice feature if you have a multi-platform project since you can generate the projects for the IDEs of choice. But I must say that I don't like the syntax too much. Anyway, it handles big projects well. I would go for cmake if I wanted an "industrial strength" solution. Even if I personally hate it a bit, it is the only viable option.

Tup: I think it is more unix-oriented. But I must say that for me it is the nicest one and it is insanely fast and simple. I love it. But what you need is cmake.