4 ms·

Fbuild: A Python based build system, unlike Make

9 points by srean 14y ago

srean 14y ago
Here is the meaty part: As I mentioned previously, every build system I've found is based off of a multi-phase declarative tree evaluation. Here's the list of the system I looked at: * [Ant] (http://ant.apache.org/) * [Automake] (http://www.gnu.org/software/automake/) * [Boost Build] (http://www.boost.org/doc/tools/build/index.html) * [Cmake] (http://www.cmake.org/) * [Make] (http://www.gnu.org/software/make/) * [Ocamlbuild] (http://gallium.inria.fr/~pouillar/) * [Omake] (http://omake.metaprl.org/index.html) * [Qmake] (http://doc.trolltech.com/4.2/qmake-manual.html) * [Rake] (http://rake.rubyforge.org/) * [SCons] (http://www.scons.org/) * [Waf] (http://code.google.com/p/waf/) By "declarative tree evaluation", I mean that the order of evaluation is explicitly encoded in a dependency tree. Each node has a function that takes one or more inputs and returns one or more outputs. By "multi phased", I consider building the tree as one phase, walking the dependencies as another, and evaluating the nodes as yet another. This contrasts with `Fbuild`, which I consider to be a single-phase procedural build system. As python evaluates each cached function, the dependency implicitly gets evaluated. This means that it's possible to dynamically modify the build on demand:
beagle3 14y ago
Worth mentioning that the "single phase" concept seems to be the same as djb redo http://cr.yp.to/redo/atomic.html http://cr.yp.to/redo/atomic.html which djb described (but never released) some 10 years ago. apenwarr implemented the redo spec in python "to the letter", and also a shell script called "do" which is very short, and can be shipped with a project so one does not have to worry about having it installed. That said, a quick look at fbuild shows that it is interesting, and despite a similar concept, very different from redo.

9 points by srean 14y ago

srean 14y ago

Here is the meaty part: As I mentioned previously, every build system I've found is based off of a multi-phase declarative tree evaluation. Here's the list of the system I looked at: * [Ant] (http://ant.apache.org/) * [Automake] (http://www.gnu.org/software/automake/) * [Boost Build] (http://www.boost.org/doc/tools/build/index.html) * [Cmake] (http://www.cmake.org/) * [Make] (http://www.gnu.org/software/make/) * [Ocamlbuild] (http://gallium.inria.fr/~pouillar/) * [Omake] (http://omake.metaprl.org/index.html) * [Qmake] (http://doc.trolltech.com/4.2/qmake-manual.html) * [Rake] (http://rake.rubyforge.org/) * [SCons] (http://www.scons.org/) * [Waf] (http://code.google.com/p/waf/) By "declarative tree evaluation", I mean that the order of evaluation is explicitly encoded in a dependency tree. Each node has a function that takes one or more inputs and returns one or more outputs. By "multi phased", I consider building the tree as one phase, walking the dependencies as another, and evaluating the nodes as yet another. This contrasts with `Fbuild`, which I consider to be a single-phase procedural build system. As python evaluates each cached function, the dependency implicitly gets evaluated. This means that it's possible to dynamically modify the build on demand:

beagle3 14y ago

Worth mentioning that the "single phase" concept seems to be the same as djb redo http://cr.yp.to/redo/atomic.html http://cr.yp.to/redo/atomic.html which djb described (but never released) some 10 years ago. apenwarr implemented the redo spec in python "to the letter", and also a shell script called "do" which is very short, and can be shipped with a project so one does not have to worry about having it installed. That said, a quick look at fbuild shows that it is interesting, and despite a similar concept, very different from redo.