Best build tool for D projects

[Chris Molozian]

Hey All,

This is my first post to the mailing list, I'm an avid follower of D's 
development and am currently using it to develop a compiler for my 
thesis work. One of the goals of this stage of the development work is 
to provide a simple build environment to compile the codebase on Linux, 
Windows and Mac OS X. The only complex aspects of the build process is 
compiling the LLVM-D bindings and linking to LLVM.

I'm evaluating build tools for this purpose and have concluded (correct 
me if I'm wrong) that the D-orientated build tools: Bud 
<http://www.dsource.org/projects/build> and DSSS 
<http://www.dsource.org/projects/dsss> are abandoned. I'm not sure 
whether development on xfBuild 
<https://bitbucket.org/h3r3tic/xfbuild/overview> is still going on.

I'd like to use a tool that is easy for testers to install on their 
system (preferably pre-built binaries are available) and use to compile 
my work. I've been looking at C/C++ build tools and have narrowed it 
down to these:

    * Jam (ftjam) <http://www.freetype.org/jam/index.html>,
      cross-platform and platform independent build language. Lots of
      variants with the same name, therefore finding it hard to find
      good tutorials and documentation.
    * Boost.Build (bjam) <http://www.boost.org/boost-build2/>, not sure
      how it differs to ftjam.
    * Cook <http://miller.emu.id.au/pmiller/software/cook/>, can't find
      whether it can be built for use on Windows. No pre-built Windows
      binary. Very extensive documentation, although I think the default
      build file name is silly "Howto.cook" :-) .

After all this preamble I guess what I'm asking is... what (if any) 
cross-platform build tools does everyone use with their D projects? Any 
feedback on experiences with any of the build tools I've mentioned is 
also greatly appreciated. If you can suggest any alternatives, please do.

If you've read this far, thanks for taking the time to read it :-) and 
sorry for the long message.

Cheers,

Chris

PS: I've seen the CMakeD <http://www.dsource.org/projects/cmaked> 
module, I know a lot of people recommend CMake for cross-platform builds 
and that the KDE guys use it. I have tried to like it... but settled on 
hating it. The procedural language is daft and ugly and I loathe the 
CMakeLists.txt file that goes in each directory. I've already ruled it out.

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