[Scons-users] ANNOUNCE: Fubsy 0.0.1: the universal build tool

[Greg Ward]

[apologies if this is slightly off-topic, but I've been hard at work
on a new build tool that is strongly influenced by SCons, but should
be faster and more flexible: it's not likely to steal users from SCons
yet, but I'd love to get input from SCons developers]

Fubsy: The Universal Build Tool
===============================

I am pleased to announce version 0.0.1 of Fubsy, a new tool for
efficiently building software. In concrete terms, it lets you
conditionally (re)build targets from sources, based on which sources
have changed since the last build. Typically, targets and sources are
all files in a directory tree. In theory, they can be any resource on
a computer.

More abstractly, Fubsy is an engine for conditional execution of
actions based on the dependencies between related resources.

As you might guess from the version number, Fubsy is in the early
stages of development. The basic ideas are in place, and the user
guide provides a description of where the software is headed. But the
goal of this release is to recruit developers who will contribute
ideas, code, criticisms, bug reports, and even vague half-baked ideas.
All are welcome.

Some highlights of Fubsy:

  * like Make, Fubsy has a simple scripting language of its own rather
    than using an existing general-purpose language

  * unlike Make, Fubsy has local variables, multiple data types,
    expressions, and function calls

  * also unlike Make, Fubsy doesn't care how you indent your code

  * like SCons, Fubsy strongly encourages you to describe your
    dependencies fully and accurately; in return for that effort,
    Fubsy will guarantee a correct and optimal build

  * unlike SCons, Fubsy has low overhead: it was written with careful
    attention to performance and memory use, and my goal is that it
    should handle builds with hundreds of thousands of files without
    breaking a sweat

  * Fubsy is designed to have a small, language/tool/policy-neutral
    core, with all interesting decisions happening in plugins.
    Someday, it will be possible to write plugins in multiple
    languages (Python, Ruby, Lua, JavaScript, ... whatever someone
    implements support for).

  * Fubsy will provide first-class support for both C/C++ and Java in
    standard plugins, making it one of the very few build tools to
    support the world's most widely-used programming languages.

For more information:

    http://fubsy.gerg.ca/

Or jump straight to the user guide:

    http://fubsy.readthedocs.org/en/0.0.1/