Re:Make vs. Tup (2016)
by AstralStorm on Monday November 19, 2018 @11:55AM
(#18487717)
CMake actually is language independent, but it so happens that only C, C++, Assembly, Fortran are first class citizens. Java and Ada are second class. Anything else, nobody wrote it. You might find a package to find the compiler and dependencies perhaps.
It is very much possible to add other languages.
I’ve used tup in a previous project. I was expecting issues that I couldn’t predict before getting my hands dirty, but it was actually a very smooth transition.
For complex C and C++ projects, I can recommend tup. I’ve also used it for Latex documents.
premake¹ feels like an elegant autoconf alternative to me, and can be combined with various build systems including make. The syntax is far nicer than cmake too, but frankly that bar isn’t very high.
Sadly, it isn’t used by all that many projects² which holds me back from wanting to depend on it. I have played with it in a few personal projects though, and have been impressed.
1. https://premake.github.io/ 2. https://github.com/premake/premake-core/wiki/Who-Uses-Premak...
CMake and similar tools don't attract me because they're not language independent. The best thing about make (and Tup too) is that it lets you express dependencies and ways to satisfy them in terms of other tools.
Now what make is not good at is being ./configure. I'd like to see a more elegant autoconf-like tool to detect things about the environment and generate configure.{h,mk}.