When comparing Jam vs Autotools, the Slant community recommends Jam for most people. In the question“What are the best open-source build systems for C/C++?” Jam is ranked 15th while Autotools is ranked 18th. The most important reason people chose Jam is:
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.
Ranked in these QuestionsQuestion Ranking
Pros
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.
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.
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.
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.
Pro Based on standard tools
It's a standard tool built over standard tools.
Pro Ubiquitous
It's a well established build system that is ubiquitous in the open source world.
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.
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.
Cons
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.
Con Perl
Autoconf is dependent on Perl.
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.
Con Poor documentation
In spite of its many years of existence, the available documentation leaves much to be desired.
