What build system has the best support for cross platform driver, library and GUI builds?

Question

What would be the best choice of build system for a more than one million line multi platform project, which produces drivers, libraries, command line tools, GUIs, and OS install packages for all the mainstream OSes, using both the GNU and Microsoft toolchains?

Our source code is mainly C, with Python, C# and GNU makefile, and a little C++ and bash. It resides mainly in one repository, but we push source code to various third parties all of whom have their source code code repositories. There is also some interest in keeping the build fast, which might involve splitting up the project.

Currently we use a mixture of GNU make, bash, python and Microsoft's DDKBUILD. The main problems are that we are maintaining a complex set of scripts on top of make and would prefer to use third party (preferably open source) tools, and that cygwin is not proving to be robust on Windows (e.g. fork isn't always possible), and that our current build system does not build or install the toolchain so is vulnerable to tool chain version changes.

Answer 1

JetBrains TeamCity works very well in general, so should be worth having on the eval list.

ThoughtWorks Cruise is also in the same space. While its v1, it comes from a stable that's been around for a while.

There's nothing about Team Foundation Server that would make necessarily count it out for your situation, but out of the box it might be more MS-shop centric that the other two I've mentioned.

As a general comment, with the level of variety you have, you definitely want to trial whatever it is you want to use - just because something is supported as a tick on the box doesnt mean its going to suit what oyu're looking for.

Answer 2

Dickson,

Is your build mostly monolithic or do you want to build some libraries separately and assemble them into the larger application? If inter-project dependencies are a big deal, your choices become limited quickly. AnthillPro does it well, and I think TeamCity has some Ivy integration support. From what you're saying, it sounds like this is not an absolute need, but might be helpful in speeding the build. It's certainly a strategy that we've seen a number of teams execute effectively.

Since you're looking at cross-platform (I assume multiple machine) builds, most of the open source tools other than Hudson are ruled out.

A build server comparison matrix is hosted by our friends at Thoughtworks here: confluence.public.thoughtworks.org/display/CC/CI+Feature+Matrix

Good luck.

Answer 3

You should have CMake on your list of alternatives to investigate. CMake is a meta-tool, i.e. it generates the input to the build-tool of your choice (GNU make, Visual Studio, etc.). I can recommend it strongly.

Answer 4

You may want to look at Cruise. It is built on Java so it will run on any platform that supports that. You can also have multiple build agents on different machines that can perform the different tasks on the different platforms. Thoughtworks is still building it out so some of the functionality is lacking, but it may be a a good option since you are looking for true cross-platform capabilities.

Answer 5

I vote for CMake, as a meta-building tool that really rewrite KDE4 build system from scratch -- and make KDE4 now a cross-platform desktop that even running on WindowsCE!

CMake is the carrier porting KDE4 to any OS on earth -- by generating Makefile( or vcprojs in Windows case) for about 40 OSes with relative toolchains!

Answer 6

SCons is a cross-platform build system implemented in Python. We use it to build our code on three platforms. It can automatically detect your build tools but you can also put arbitrary Python code in your build script. It also lets you separate your environment setup from description of your project structure, a great feature for reuse of your buidl scripts in different environments. Besides building your project directly, it can also generate Visual Studio project files.