nobs: my take on SW builds

Hey guys, for about a year and a half I've been working on a build tool called nobs (normal build system). Recently I put together a website and some example builds for existing projects and thought I may as well show it to the world. (link) (you can find examples on Github)

As for the motivation and what it brings to the table: I wanted a build description that makes artifacts and their boundaries explicit. A lot of C/C++ projects eventually grow into one large build context: a long list of source files, include paths, defines and special cases. That works, but it can make it hard to see what is being built, which sources belong to which artifact, and where one component ends and another begins. nobs is my attempt to model that more directly. It also makes cross-platform and compiler-specific differences easier to keep under control.

In case you decide to try it out, I've had good results with giving the manual to an AI assistant. The output usually still needs some polishing, but it has been useful for producing the kind of build descriptions I need. Let me know what you think. gn



https://redd.it/1u3bkxk
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