D based build system to replace current makefile

[Flamaros]

On Thursday, 30 May 2013 at 07:50:11 UTC, Timothee Cour wrote:
> We should move to a D-based build system to build
> dmd/druntime/phobos/d-programming-language/tools.
>
> Reasons, in case it's not obvious:
>
> 1) DRY: makefile is full of repetitions
> 2) cross platform: different makefiles for different 
> architectures are
> needed (even win32 vs win64!)
> 3) safety: makefile happily ignores that $VAR variables are not 
> set, and
> can create havoc; likewise tools/update.sh is a bash script and 
> may not
> stop on 1st error.
> 4) tools/update.sh doesn't work out of the box on OSX last i 
> checked (I
> made a pull request for that some time back:
> https://github.com/timotheecour/d-programming-language.org/commit/557a2befa74ddfe99ee5c0e12e7c3d028f27d276)
>
> Even a bad D-based build system will be better than a makefile, 
> but it's
> not hard to write a reasonable one at least for the particular 
> task of
> building dmd/druntime/phobos/d-programming-language/tools. 
> It'll lower the
> entry point for people to contribute to dmd/phobos by making 
> rebuilding
> trivial.
>
> Here's how it'd work:
>
> 1) a mixed D-based/makefile build that'll work 'from scratch' 
> via
> bootstrapping:
> 1a) dmd: first uses a makefile to build dmd+druntime
> 1b) rdmd built from a D file using dmd
> 1c) phobos, d-programming-language, tools built from a D file 
> using rdmd
>
> 2) a pure D-based build that'll work using an existing dmd 
> binary (eg
> distributed binary)
> that's the one most will use.

You may want take a look at Qbs, it will the next build system of 
Qt in replacement of QMake.
http://qt-project.org/wiki/Qbs-Quick-Reference

Using a full featured language is good cause, there is no 
restriction and build aren't just build, it's also 
packaging/testing issues.
Doing something that just have to call compiler binaries is 
finaly the simple thing, and provide more control to users.