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digitalmars.D.announce - Reggae: a metabuild system in D (Daniel, you should read this). Now

reply "Atila Neves" <atila.neves gmail.com> writes:
http://code.dlang.org/packages/reggae

Daniel: see last paragraph (see, I mentioned your name! ;) )

Let's see if I can explain it better this time. Reggae is:

. An executable and a library of data definitions to describe 
build systems declaratively, in D. It also allows for imperative 
code when needed, since the definition language is D
. A collection of low-level primitives to describe a build DAG, 
making completely arbitrary builds possible
. A collection of high-level convenience rules for C, C++ and D 
builds
. The high-level D rules provide a per-package compilation model 
by default, but there's a command-line switch to build per file
. Automatic dependency tracking for C, C++ and D builds
. Integrates with dub for package management, reggae delegates to 
it
. An API to use dub project configurations, builds and source 
files
. A seamless way to get out-of-tree builds with make or ninja for 
dub projects. No configuration needed! Simply type `reggae -b 
make /path/to/project` or `reggae -b ninja /path/to/project` from 
where you want to build it and that's that.

Reggae depends on `dub describe` to get the information from dub 
it requires to generate a build system. Unfortunately, "dub 
describe" is currently buggy for `dub.json` files with 
configurations, which are most of them. Fortunately, I fixed the 
bug and there's an open pull request at 
https://github.com/D-Programming-Language/dub/pull/577. If it 
doesn't work for you, clone my repo, build the dub version from 
there and make sure it's in your `PATH` when you run reggae. If 
your project happens to not have configurations in your dub.json, 
the latest dub release should work just fine.

You should get faster builds out of the box. I have to run more 
tests, but using the Ninja backend I managed to do a build of 
vibe.d 2x faster after changing `core.d` than the equivalent 
build using dub. I guess YMMV and is probably especially 
dependent on how many

Please try to use it and complain about the API so I (we?) can 
make it better. This for me is the bare minimum to make it work; 
there are several open questions I have myself, who knows what'd 
happen if someone were to use this for an actual production 
build. I'd write a blog about it but it's early days methinks.

I'm going to try and make the JSON dependency a compile-time 
option so that a version of reggae can be built that doesn't 
support dub. I'm also going to see if I can get a binary backend 
going that isn't particularly fast but works; the idea being to 
not depend on make, ninja, or in the future, tup.

Atila
Jun 02 2015
parent reply "BlackEdder" <edder tkwsping.nl> writes:
On Tuesday, 2 June 2015 at 13:45:40 UTC, Atila Neves wrote:

 http://code.dlang.org/packages/reggae

 Atila


Does reggae make it easy to build multiple executables in one go? 
Or is it limited to one executable per configuration (as dub)?

Cheers, Edwin
Jun 02 2015
parent reply "Atila Neves" <atila.neves gmail.com> writes:
On Tuesday, 2 June 2015 at 14:18:29 UTC, BlackEdder wrote:

 On Tuesday, 2 June 2015 at 13:45:40 UTC, Atila Neves wrote:

 http://code.dlang.org/packages/reggae

 Atila


 Does reggae make it easy to build multiple executables in one 
 go?


Yes. Reggae is able to build itself, its own build description 
produces a ut binary and the production binary concurrently. It's 
the example in the README.

Anything you want to build and any way you want it, reggae lets 
you. If it doesn't then that's my fault, and I'll fix it.

Atila
Jun 02 2015
parent reply "Dicebot" <public dicebot.lv> writes:
Looks promising so far. I will create separate issues in actual 
repo for desired improvements.
Jun 03 2015
parent reply "Dicebot" <public dicebot.lv> writes:
https://github.com/atilaneves/reggae/issues

I think this is all I would want before considering to try reggae 
as my main build system. Concept worked pretty good so far and I 
feel very satisfied with what we can potentially get from it - 
though, I must admit, I haven't tried to port any of more 
advanced makefiles to it.

I'd suggest to try reimplementing DMD/Phobos makefiles with 
reggae once you are confortable with a design to see if it really 
works up to expectations. These contain some rather nasty rule 
mess and can serve as both great playground for checking design 
choices and selling point in improving simplicity / clarity.
Jun 03 2015
parent reply "Atila Neves" <atila.neves gmail.com> writes:
On Thursday, 4 June 2015 at 01:20:18 UTC, Dicebot wrote:

 https://github.com/atilaneves/reggae/issues

 I think this is all I would want before considering to try 
 reggae as my main build system. Concept worked pretty good so 
 far and I feel very satisfied with what we can potentially get 
 from it - though, I must admit, I haven't tried to port any of 
 more advanced makefiles to it.

 I'd suggest to try reimplementing DMD/Phobos makefiles with 
 reggae once you are confortable with a design to see if it 
 really works up to expectations. These contain some rather 
 nasty rule mess and can serve as both great playground for 
 checking design choices and selling point in improving 
 simplicity / clarity.


The idea was to eventually use it for DMD/Phobos/druntime but as 
you said, those Makefiles are pretty hairy and it'll take some 
work. I've even considered some way of automatically porting... 
but that's obviously quite a bit of work as well.

Atila
Jun 04 2015
parent "Ronnie" <ronniec95 lineone.net> writes:
D is lacking a cohesive package and build system, at least on the 
order of something like python (and even rust) to really take off.

Dub is ok, but it needs to work to gather all the dependencies 
(including impure "c" libraries).

I really like D, but coding in python to try out new libraries is 
a zero thought process. To do this in D right now there is 
definitely friction.

Hope this is the solution to all of this.

PS. Needs to work in Windows too (32/64bit)

Ronnie
Jun 05 2015