When comparing Jam vs Tup, the Slant community recommends Tup for most people. In the question“What are the best open-source build systems for C/C++?” Tup is ranked 5th while Jam is ranked 15th. The most important reason people chose Tup is:
It is very fast.
Specs
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 Speed
It is very fast.
Pro Tidy
It will automatically clean-up old files.
Pro General
Not bound to C/C++.
Pro Lua
Tup supports writing build definitions using Lua or Tupfiles.
Pro Cross platform
Supports Linux, OSX, and Windows.
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 Variants not working on Windows
The solution for having different build configuration (think Release/Debug) is broken on Windows.
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).
