mave

O accursed C++ build system

Why?

make made me very angry and cmake couldn't find FLTK

Usage

Create a project like this:

git clone https://git.tobskep.com/tobskep/mave
cd mave
rm -r .git # there's probably a better way to do that

Then, edit this and stick it in ./mavescripts/config.

PRODUCT="./my-app"                      # output binary
CXXFLAGS=`pkg-config --cflags my-lib`   # C++ compiler flags
LDFLAGS=`pkg-config --libs my-lib`      # linker flags

Under this config, you put your C/C++ source code in ./src (or subdirectories therein.) Then, you can compile your project like this:

./mave

Here are descriptions of every mave config option:

Name	Description	Default
SRC_DIR	Where to find C++ source code	src
OBJ_DIR	Where to place compiled objects	obj
PRODUCT	Name of final binary to link	./a.out
SRC_TYPES	File extensions (without dot) to search for in $SRC_DIR	cc|c|cpp
HDR_TYPES	File extensions (without dot) to search for in source	hh|h|hpp
CC	C/C++ compiler to use	cpp
LD	Linker to use	$CC
NO_OBJCHECK	A bad idea.

Setting NO_OBJCHECK to any value will bite you later. It disables a check that ensures that there are no 'spare' object files floating around in $OBJ_DIR, which may be from previous builds of code that no longer exists. If you define a symbol in a source file, compile, delete that source file and define the symbol again in another, this will cause a linker error and it will be impossible to diagnose. This setting exists out of kindness and should not be used in reasonable codebases.

mave, however cursed it is, is fairly smart and checks whether an object file is newer or older than your source code. It can also tell when headers that source code references are changed and can rebuild object files correspondingly.

It is not a scripting language (a-la GNU make) but rather a simple, rigid build system that does one thing and does it well enough.

To delete object files and output binaries, you can do this:

./mave clean

This deletes the object dump and the binary it linked. It doesn't do anything else.

You can also force mave to rebuild the entire project:

./mave force

Which effectively does the same thing, only it cleans and rebuilds in one go.

Moving ./mavescripts

If you don't want to put the build modules in ./mavescripts, you can rename the folder and edit the following line at the top of the main mave script:

export MAVE_DIR=./mavescripts

Known Limitations

• It can only compile C++ source code. It might be able to compile C source too, but I haven't tried it.
• It can't compile libraries (as far as I know). You'll likely have to edit the link script for that. (Please let me know if you do! My email is tobskep@aol.com.)
• More to be found, probably!
• You can't change which compiler/linker it uses without editing the compile and link scripts respectively. I should fix that.

"mave"?

Microwave. AAGaming said I should release it on the condition that I give it a stupid name. It also sounds like make!

Reuse

License information can be found in LICENSE. It's the MIT license, if you don't feel like checking (I understand.)

You can credit me however you like (so long as you do) but I'd just like a mention in your README and maybe a link to my website (tobskep.com).