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Ninja
All
4
Experiences
Pros
2
Cons
1
Specs
Top
Pro
Simple set up
Once dependencies like maven are installed it is up and running in minutes with one simple command.
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Con
Little user choice in organization
Since most of the code and folder structure are automatically generated, this leaves little room to the developer on how they will organize their project.
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Pro
Easy horizontal scaling
Ninja is stateless by design. This makes horizontal scaling very easy and just a matter of adding servers.
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Specs
Platforms:
Windows, Linux, Mac
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52
3
Cake
All
4
Experiences
Pros
2
Cons
1
Specs
Top
Pro
Tools support
Standard support for MSBuild, MSTest, xUnit, NUnit, NuGet, ILMerge, WiX and SignTool.
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Con
No GUI
Everything is script based, there is no graphical front end.
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Pro
Cross platform
Windows, Linux and macOS versions available.
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Specs
Platforms:
Windows, Linux, Mac
Technology:
C#
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Free
2
0
Gradle
All
11
Experiences
Pros
10
Cons
1
Top
Con
Can get slow for large builds
Since Gradle uses Groovy instead of XML for it's configuration scripts, it achieves a great deal of flexibility but unfortunately that comes with slower builds when the project gets large enough. This is because the entire Groovy script has to be recompiled for every build instead of simply being parsed.
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Pro
Official Android Studio build tool
Android Studio's build system is an Android plugin for Gradle. What's more is that the Android Gradle plugin can be installed and run even on machines that don't have Android Studio, which enables you to build Android apps everywhere (for example continuous integration servers).
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Pro
Lots of plugins available
Gradle has hundreds of open source plugins available. This is extremely helpful for users who want to speed up their development.
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Pro
Dependency programming tool
Gradle is a dependency programming tool first and foremost. Gradle will make sure that all declared dependencies are properly executed for every random task that you execute in your setup. The code can be spread across many directories in any kind of file layout.
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Pro
Short scripts
Since Gradle does not use XML but it uses it's own DSL based on Groovy, Gradle scripts tend to be shorter than other build tools that use XML. Boilerplate code is also considerably small because it's DSL is designed to solve a specific problem: moving the software through its lifecycle starting from compilation into static analysis and testing, packaging and finally deployment.
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Pro
Integrates with Maven
Gradle can deploy to remote Maven repositories or even install to your local Maven repo.
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Pro
Built for continuous delivery
Gradle can be easily integrated with Jenkins to create a continuous delivery pipeline for any Java application.
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Pro
IDEA integration
Gradle has full integration with Jetbrains IDEA. IDEA understands multi-module Gradle builds and automatically maintains the IDEA modules within the project. You also have the option to run unit tests with either the built-in JUnit/TestNG test runner, or delegate running the test to Gradle using the same visualization as the built-in runner.
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Pro
Integration with Ant
Gradle integrates perfectly with Ant. Giving developers a lot of Ant's flexibility. You can run individual Ant tasks on Gradle or even entire Ant builds.
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Pro
Convention over configuration
Gradle follows the convention over configuration paradigm in order to make it easier for developers by having already made a number of decisions out of the box.
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Pro
Eclipse integration
Gradle has full integration with Eclipse through developer tools and plugins.
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Experiences
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46
8
GNU Make
All
5
Experiences
Pros
3
Cons
1
Specs
Top
Pro
Uses the full power of the UNIX shell
Make takes advantage of the powerful UNIX shell, using it at it's full potential. STDIN and STDOUT are especially useful because of their versatility.
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Con
Doesn't run on Windows by default
Make requires Cygwin/msys2/MinGW to run on Windows.
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Pro
No need for wrapper modules
Other build tools need wrapper modules to do certain tasks. The biggest disadvantage of these wrapper modules is that they bind you to a version of that tool. With Make you don't have that problem, there's no need for wrappers and no tools to bind you to a version, you can use any version of Make that you want.
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Pro
Works with more than just node.js
Since it's written in C and can be found in all UNIX-based systems it can be used on platforms other than node.js.
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Specs
Platforms:
Unix, Linux, Windows, Mac
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56
13
Bazel
All
11
Experiences
Pros
9
Cons
2
Top
Pro
Correct and repeatable builds
Builds only use input files that are explicitly declared in the build specification. On Linux, Bazel runs tools in a sandboxed environment that contain only the minimum necessary files required.
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Con
Draconian sandboxing, explicit inputs requirement
Requirement to explicitly name all inputs disqualifies Bazel for many workflows, e.g. those relying on tools that scan a directory tree themselves looking for files to process. Sandboxing as implemented in Bazel imposes further restrictions. If a command is successful when you type it in the shell, it should also be successful when pasted verbatim into a rule, but with Bazel it very often isn't.
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Pro
Fast even at scale
Even at large scale it's pretty fast (it's based on what Google uses internally for their huge code base).
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Con
Confusing for beginners
With so many capabilities, trying to implement with a simple project is overkill and unpleasant.
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Pro
Can rule shell commands
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Pro
Handles mixed language builds
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Pro
High level build descriptions
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Pro
Build rule errors are informative
When builds fail because of an issue in the build rules, the errors provided are usually very informative and helpful to resolve the issue.
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Pro
Good IDE support
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Pro
Standard protocol for remote execution and caching
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Pro
Remote execution of commands
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Experiences
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18
6
Tup
All
8
Experiences
Pros
5
Cons
2
Specs
Top
Pro
Speed
It is very fast.
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Con
Variants not working on Windows
The solution for having different build configuration (think Release/Debug) is broken on Windows.
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Pro
Tidy
It will automatically clean-up old files.
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Con
Cannot incrementally modify or delete files
Cannot incrementally modify files (e.g. LaTeX PDF, VISing and LIGHTing Quake maps, which takes the same BSP file as input and output), and will not delete files (e.g. rm build/*.o).
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Pro
General
Not bound to C/C++.
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Pro
Lua
Tup supports writing build definitions using Lua or Tupfiles.
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Pro
Cross platform
Supports Linux, OSX, and Windows.
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Specs
Platforms:
Windows, Linux, Mac
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Experiences
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11
4
Please
All
4
Experiences
Pros
3
Cons
1
Top
Pro
Cross-platform
Linux, macOS, FreeBSD.
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Con
No support for Android or iOS yet
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Pro
Intuitive syntax and workflow
Much simpler than multi-tier build systems, like Make and Ninja.
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Pro
Code Completion
Works with many IDEs, including Visual Studio Code.
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Free
2
1
Jam
All
5
Experiences
Pros
4
Cons
1
Top
Pro
Has a central package repository
A central repository provides more guarantees about the availability of the package. With requiring directly from repository urls, the entire project could potentially be taken down on a whim.
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Con
Forced AMD compatibility means fewer libraries
AMD is currently not as popular as CommonJS modules, which means if a library isn't supported, you'll have to deal with it yourself.
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Pro
Community is focused on client side javascript
Because Jam only manages Javascript and only works on the client side, you have the assurance that any packages listed are AMD compatible for asynchronous loading.
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Pro
Architecture independent
Jam's only a front-end package manager, the rest of your server can be on a different architecture or framework. No matter what the architecture, Jam will integrate easily with it.
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Pro
Provides the best AMD compatibility allowing for better asynchronous loading
Jam requires AMD (Asynchronous Module Definition), which means faster package loading, as it can be done asynchronously.
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3
3
Autotools
All
7
Experiences
Pros
4
Cons
3
Top
Con
Perl
Autoconf is dependent on Perl.
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Pro
Based on standard tools
It's a standard tool built over standard tools.
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Con
Autotools is far too complicated
It seems to add far too much complexity to projects. The build system has a tendency to be more complex than the actual projects that it's being used to build.
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Pro
Ubiquitous
It's a well established build system that is ubiquitous in the open source world.
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Con
Poor documentation
In spite of its many years of existence, the available documentation leaves much to be desired.
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Pro
make distcheck
Build your project, run the tests, create a release tarball, unpack it with read-only sources, build it and run the tests. This should be the minimum standard for every build system, yet it seems hard to reach.
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Pro
Basic API for building anything: ./configure; make
The skills you learn for building one language still work when you build something else, even down to creating books for print from emacs org-mode.
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3
6
Built By the Slant team
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4.7 star rating
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