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Build2, a Cargo-like dependency and build manager for C/C++

157 points by firebacon 8y ago

bradhe 8y ago
I’ve been using Conan.io for a bit. I come to c++ from ruby ang golang—both of which have ecosystems with very different dependency management philosophies. It’s interesting to see these various tools arrive in the c++ ecosystem. There’s clearly not a winner yet.
- TillE 8y ago
  I think vcpkg is the clear winner for people who just want to get started building something. It's the fastest way to get a ton of common packages built and installed. For more delicate maintenance of stable software (which will often need to depend on specific versions, customize builds, etc), it's still a little hazy. Conan looks ok, but I don't think it clearly beats my current solution of hacking something together from scratch in a couple hundred lines of Python.
  - mdip 8y ago
    I don't think it clearly beats my current solution of hacking something together from scratch in a couple hundred lines of Python. I've so thought this more than a few times[0]. Every single time I run into something on my two miserable projects that rely on Hunter, I invariably find myself wondering why I don't just undo all of the bullsh!t and use the zsh scripts I threw together for the two projects that I never have build/build dependency issues with. I believe that, at some point, every native developer writes something like this. It's funny to think that due to this circumstance there are probably more build tools available for C/C++ than there are packages in all of the mainstream C/C++ dependency management systems[1]. [0] Though I tend to use bash (well, more often, zsh), rather than Python. [1] And probably all of them have a Boost package...
weberc2 8y ago
I don't like making "X technology sucks" posts, and I'll probably get downvoted to oblivion for this opinion, but I'm really rooting for anything other than CMake.
- jupp0r 8y ago
  I'm curious if you've ever worked with something like cargo or go build. CMake works well for what it does, but it doesn't do the right things if you've ever seen more modern solutions to the same problem.
  - bpicolo 8y ago
    > anything other than CMake I think OP is on the same page
  - hoistbypetard 8y ago
    Could you expand on this a little? I've dabbled with go build, but it didn't make me want to run screaming away from CMake. Where do you think it's not doing the right thing? I really like that it can generate project files that let me use the most useful debuggers on whatever platform I'm targeting. I think some aspects of its scripting language are a challenge to work with, but that has felt like a small price to pay for being able to easily work/debug in VS on Windows, Xcode on Mac, etc.
    - jupp0r 8y ago
      * lack of dependency management * no concept of versions to declare API compatibility * no easy way to hook into a central package repository * source files to build have to be named manually in CMakeLists.txt * header dependencies can easily be wrongly declared, which is never noticed * the language is hard to work with * it's quite slow for large projects (10s of thousands of compilation units) * cross-language builds are a pain (C++ + JS) I'm not saying this is all CMake's fault, I really like it for the reasons you outlined. At work, we are transitioning to Bazel to get rid of some of the pain points above, although it has different problems. Having worked on some larger Go and Rust projects, I find the integration of language and build tools to be fantastic to work with and wish the C++ community would come up with a practical solution (probably involving Modules TS) at some point.
jupp0r 8y ago
The submission title is strongly misleading. From the page: Unlike most other programming languages that encapsulate the build system, package dependency manager, and project dependency manager into a single tool (such as Rust's cargo or Go's go), build2 is a hierarchy of several tools that you will be using directly and which together with your version control system (VCS) will constitute the core of your project management toolset.
- commandocrypto 8y ago
  Agreed that the title is misleading, but if you look at it does seem a bit like cargo in functionality. Which begs the question: why create this instead of using nix expressions?
- sanlyx 8y ago
  From the actual home page (http://build2.org http://build2.org): Next-generation, Cargo-like integrated build toolchain for C++.
  - jupp0r 8y ago
    Thanks for clarifying.
hoistbypetard 8y ago
Just from a quick read of the page, I couldn't put my finger on why I might choose this over conan + cmake. Could someone who's tried both weigh in on what the relative strengths and weaknesses are?
quietbritishjim 8y ago
The problem with these build tools is never the tool itself (though admittedly I never get far enough to test them). It's the lack of packages in the repositories that back them up. For build2, the central repository is https://cppget.org/ https://cppget.org/ which has 24 packages. 24!! For comparison, npm has more than 600,000 and PyPI has more than 140,000. Now of course not all of those are great quality, but it does illustrate the scale of the problem. More concretely: As a go-to example for these repos I always look for Google's protobuf library. Most projects I work on depend on three or four high-level libraries which, in turn, depend on protobuf; if even protobuf isn't there (as is the case at cppget.org) then it's hopeless that those higher-level libraries will be. So far, the best native package manager I've come across is vcpkg [1]. I hate that it's made by Microsoft, and I hate that it uses CMake, but there is no easier to build and use e.g. gRPC on Windows. They recently added Linux and Mac support (static linking only). Edit: for fair comparison, it has just over 700 packages. [1] https://github.com/Microsoft/vcpkg https://github.com/Microsoft/vcpkg
- 0xFFC 8y ago
  I upvoted you. But what is wrong with being made by Microsoft? When the license is great. But I agree with the CMake part. CMake is abomination. CMake is diabolical. But it is not vcpkg problem. It is C++ community program. They chose CMake because it was the facto build system for most packages.
- boris 8y ago
  I don't believe we can get to thousands of packages by packaging a substantial part ourselves -- we will just get bogged down in this instead of building a decent toolchain. Instead, the "secret" I believe is to make creating, testing, and publishing C/C++ packages as easy and frictionless as possible. This is how you get to thousands of packages and this is what we are trying to do.
  - izacus 8y ago
    Is it at least able to consume CMake projects so we can mix and match until more packages are available?
Ne02ptzero 8y ago
How does one submit a new package to https://cppget.org https://cppget.org? I can find a 'Submit' button or documentation about this.
- boris 8y ago
  Good question. Currently you will need to email a git repository URL and tag you want published (e.g., https://git.build2.org/hello/libhello.git#v1.0.0 https://git.build2.org/hello/libhello.git#v1.0.0) and we will publish it for you (or you can provide a package archive if you prefer). For the next version we plan to implement a CI/CD bot which will poll your git repository for tagged versions and automatically test and publish them to cppget.org (there will be some sort of a control file that you will be able to use to specify which tags should be published where, etc).
  - thespirit 8y ago
    > Currently you will need to email Oh
  - jncraton 8y ago
    Thanks for your work on this! That sounds like a great direction for future development. I hope that you are able to make this work out!
chpatrick 8y ago
The best experience I've had so far with C++ dependency management is with Nix: https://nixos.org/nix/ https://nixos.org/nix/ It has a very large collection of packages already available, supports many existing build systems (CMake and autotools work out of the box, but you can hook up anything), and can download binary packages for almost everything.
anordal 8y ago
Sounds like what Meson is. Meson can download other Meson projects. From anywhere (no special repo). And you can use that as a fallback for pkg-config (best of both worlds).
nickez 8y ago
Is this related to boost b2 build system? https://boostorg.github.io/build/ https://boostorg.github.io/build/

157 points by firebacon 8y ago

I’ve been using Conan.io for a bit. I come to c++ from ruby ang golang—both of which have ecosystems with very different dependency management philosophies. It’s interesting to see these various tools arrive in the c++ ecosystem. There’s clearly not a winner yet.

TillE 8y ago
I think vcpkg is the clear winner for people who just want to get started building something. It's the fastest way to get a ton of common packages built and installed. For more delicate maintenance of stable software (which will often need to depend on specific versions, customize builds, etc), it's still a little hazy. Conan looks ok, but I don't think it clearly beats my current solution of hacking something together from scratch in a couple hundred lines of Python.
- mdip 8y ago
  I don't think it clearly beats my current solution of hacking something together from scratch in a couple hundred lines of Python. I've so thought this more than a few times[0]. Every single time I run into something on my two miserable projects that rely on Hunter, I invariably find myself wondering why I don't just undo all of the bullsh!t and use the zsh scripts I threw together for the two projects that I never have build/build dependency issues with. I believe that, at some point, every native developer writes something like this. It's funny to think that due to this circumstance there are probably more build tools available for C/C++ than there are packages in all of the mainstream C/C++ dependency management systems[1]. [0] Though I tend to use bash (well, more often, zsh), rather than Python. [1] And probably all of them have a Boost package...

weberc2 8y ago

I don't like making "X technology sucks" posts, and I'll probably get downvoted to oblivion for this opinion, but I'm really rooting for anything other than CMake.

jupp0r 8y ago
I'm curious if you've ever worked with something like cargo or go build. CMake works well for what it does, but it doesn't do the right things if you've ever seen more modern solutions to the same problem.
- bpicolo 8y ago
  > anything other than CMake I think OP is on the same page
- hoistbypetard 8y ago
  Could you expand on this a little? I've dabbled with go build, but it didn't make me want to run screaming away from CMake. Where do you think it's not doing the right thing? I really like that it can generate project files that let me use the most useful debuggers on whatever platform I'm targeting. I think some aspects of its scripting language are a challenge to work with, but that has felt like a small price to pay for being able to easily work/debug in VS on Windows, Xcode on Mac, etc.
  - jupp0r 8y ago
    * lack of dependency management * no concept of versions to declare API compatibility * no easy way to hook into a central package repository * source files to build have to be named manually in CMakeLists.txt * header dependencies can easily be wrongly declared, which is never noticed * the language is hard to work with * it's quite slow for large projects (10s of thousands of compilation units) * cross-language builds are a pain (C++ + JS) I'm not saying this is all CMake's fault, I really like it for the reasons you outlined. At work, we are transitioning to Bazel to get rid of some of the pain points above, although it has different problems. Having worked on some larger Go and Rust projects, I find the integration of language and build tools to be fantastic to work with and wish the C++ community would come up with a practical solution (probably involving Modules TS) at some point.

jupp0r 8y ago

The submission title is strongly misleading. From the page: Unlike most other programming languages that encapsulate the build system, package dependency manager, and project dependency manager into a single tool (such as Rust's cargo or Go's go), build2 is a hierarchy of several tools that you will be using directly and which together with your version control system (VCS) will constitute the core of your project management toolset.

commandocrypto 8y ago
Agreed that the title is misleading, but if you look at it does seem a bit like cargo in functionality. Which begs the question: why create this instead of using nix expressions?
sanlyx 8y ago
From the actual home page (http://build2.org http://build2.org): Next-generation, Cargo-like integrated build toolchain for C++.
- jupp0r 8y ago
  Thanks for clarifying.

hoistbypetard 8y ago

Just from a quick read of the page, I couldn't put my finger on why I might choose this over conan + cmake. Could someone who's tried both weigh in on what the relative strengths and weaknesses are?

quietbritishjim 8y ago

The problem with these build tools is never the tool itself (though admittedly I never get far enough to test them). It's the lack of packages in the repositories that back them up. For build2, the central repository is https://cppget.org/ https://cppget.org/ which has 24 packages. 24!! For comparison, npm has more than 600,000 and PyPI has more than 140,000. Now of course not all of those are great quality, but it does illustrate the scale of the problem. More concretely: As a go-to example for these repos I always look for Google's protobuf library. Most projects I work on depend on three or four high-level libraries which, in turn, depend on protobuf; if even protobuf isn't there (as is the case at cppget.org) then it's hopeless that those higher-level libraries will be. So far, the best native package manager I've come across is vcpkg [1]. I hate that it's made by Microsoft, and I hate that it uses CMake, but there is no easier to build and use e.g. gRPC on Windows. They recently added Linux and Mac support (static linking only). Edit: for fair comparison, it has just over 700 packages. [1] https://github.com/Microsoft/vcpkg https://github.com/Microsoft/vcpkg

0xFFC 8y ago
I upvoted you. But what is wrong with being made by Microsoft? When the license is great. But I agree with the CMake part. CMake is abomination. CMake is diabolical. But it is not vcpkg problem. It is C++ community program. They chose CMake because it was the facto build system for most packages.
boris 8y ago
I don't believe we can get to thousands of packages by packaging a substantial part ourselves -- we will just get bogged down in this instead of building a decent toolchain. Instead, the "secret" I believe is to make creating, testing, and publishing C/C++ packages as easy and frictionless as possible. This is how you get to thousands of packages and this is what we are trying to do.
- izacus 8y ago
  Is it at least able to consume CMake projects so we can mix and match until more packages are available?

Ne02ptzero 8y ago

How does one submit a new package to https://cppget.org https://cppget.org? I can find a 'Submit' button or documentation about this.

boris 8y ago
Good question. Currently you will need to email a git repository URL and tag you want published (e.g., https://git.build2.org/hello/libhello.git#v1.0.0 https://git.build2.org/hello/libhello.git#v1.0.0) and we will publish it for you (or you can provide a package archive if you prefer). For the next version we plan to implement a CI/CD bot which will poll your git repository for tagged versions and automatically test and publish them to cppget.org (there will be some sort of a control file that you will be able to use to specify which tags should be published where, etc).
- thespirit 8y ago
  > Currently you will need to email Oh
- jncraton 8y ago
  Thanks for your work on this! That sounds like a great direction for future development. I hope that you are able to make this work out!

chpatrick 8y ago

The best experience I've had so far with C++ dependency management is with Nix: https://nixos.org/nix/ https://nixos.org/nix/ It has a very large collection of packages already available, supports many existing build systems (CMake and autotools work out of the box, but you can hook up anything), and can download binary packages for almost everything.

anordal 8y ago

Sounds like what Meson is. Meson can download other Meson projects. From anywhere (no special repo). And you can use that as a fallback for pkg-config (best of both worlds).

nickez 8y ago

Is this related to boost b2 build system? https://boostorg.github.io/build/ https://boostorg.github.io/build/