Looking to reimplement build toolchain from bash/grep/sed/awk/(auto)make/configure to something more sane (e.g. boost.build, etc)

Question

I currently maintain a few boxes that house a loosely related cornucopia of coding projects, databases and repositories (ranging from a homebrew *nix distro to my class notes), maintained by myself and a few equally pasty-skinned nerdy friends (all of said cornucopia is stored in SVN).

The vast majority of our code is in C/C++/assembly (a few utilities are in python/perl/php, we're not big java fans), compiled in gcc. Our build toolchain typically consists of a hodgepodge of make, bash, grep, sed and awk. Recent discovery of a Makefile nearly as long as the program it builds (as well as everyone's general anxiety with my cryptic sed and awking) has motivated me to seek a less painful build system.

Currently, the strongest candidate I've come across is Boost Build/Bjam as a replacement for GNU make and python as a replacement for our build-related bash scripts. Are there any other C/C++/asm build systems out there worth looking into? I've browsed through a number of make alternatives, but I haven't found any that are developed by names I know aside from Boost's.

(I should note that an ability to easily extract information from svn commandline tools such as svnversion is important, as well as enough flexibility to configure for builds of asm projects as easily as c/c++ projects)

Answer 1

You could use python-based build system, too -- http://code.google.com/p/waf/

Answer 2

We've started using CMake here at work recently. I've been pretty happy with it so far.

Answer 3

scons or cmake.

Both "cross platform" - enable compiling on Windows and Linux.

Cmake now very popular (for example boost uses it). It creates native build files for each platform - Makefiles (for Linux), VC++ projects (for Visual Studio) from custom files (CMakeList.txt). In can also create Eclipse projects, KDevelop projects etc. Since it creates native build files, you can continue using all features you're used for. For example, ccache/colorgcc/distcc for Makefiles or Visual Assist X for Visual Studio.

We use it our project and are happy with it - automatic dependencies, easy syntax, robust builds.

Scons is python bases system, which perform the builds by itself. It's IMHO less popular, and still slow for large project. But for msmall to medium project maybe good alternative.