

Waf: a Python-based framework for configuring, compiling and installing applications. - chaostheory
http://code.google.com/p/waf/

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bayareaguy
This kind of thing helps when you're part of a big team and you're in the
position to choose the build system for your code but I'm part of a small
group and a lot more of my build engineering goes into integrating existing
third-party packages. I generally write sucky wrappers around
configure/autotools because none of the alternatives are good enough to
justify the time required to switch to something better.

So far the most promising systems I've seen that do the sort of stuff I want
are Open Embedded's BitBake[1] and rPath's Conary[2], both of which look a
little like Waf. I seriously considered throwing out my wrappers and switching
to Conary a while back but it only works on Linux and I spend 1/2 my time on
OSX.

[1] - <http://developer.berlios.de/projects/bitbake>

[2] - <http://wiki.rpath.com/wiki/Conary>

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jmtulloss
I saw this a while ago, but it didn't look like it was quite done then. Has
anybody used it that can report on its readiness for a production environment?

I really liked SCons for a while, but sometimes it can be a bit quirky.
Hopefully this will be a viable replacement.

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jcl
What problems did you have with SCons? I haven't used it for anything serious
yet, but I've been considering it, and I'm curious about any potential
pitfalls.

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jmtulloss
I never really had a specific problem (that I can remember), and would
encourage you to use it. I just never got comfortable in it. It seemed like
things were a bit harder than they should have been, especially when I started
trying to make it work nicely with .NET stuff (which it doesn't support out of
the box).

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systems
doesn't this resemble A-A-P (<http://www.a-a-p.org/>) by Bram Moolenaar?

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mullr
Doesn't appear to, at first glance. I think it has much more in common with
scons. A major selling point of waf is that you can put the whole build system
as one file in your source tree, rather than requiring installation.

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systems
I don't understand ..

"rather than requiring installation." of what?

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cstejerean
of autotools, etc

