fabricate: The better "make". Finds dependencies automatically for any language.

#1

Post by benhoyt » Mon, Jul 27, 2009, 9:39 AM UTC

fabricate: The better "make". Finds dependencies automatically for any language.
code.google.com

Re: fabricate: The better "make". Finds dependencies automatically for any language.

#2

Post by dinther » Mon, Jul 27, 2009, 9:42 AM UTC

Spot on. A must have for every developer.

Re: fabricate: The better "make". Finds dependencies automatically for any language.

#3

Post by benhoyt » Mon, Jul 27, 2009, 9:55 AM UTC

We've been using memoize to build stuff for a while now, but we needed something that worked under Windows too. So here's our "fabricate" build tool. It's BSD licensed -- enjoy!

Re: fabricate: The better "make". Finds dependencies automatically for any language.

#4

Post by growt » Mon, Jul 27, 2009, 10:10 AM UTC

I haven't tried fabricate yet, but I think the number of build-tools out there is a sure sign that something fundamental is broken.

Re: fabricate: The better "make". Finds dependencies automatically for any language.

#5

Post by tvon » Mon, Jul 27, 2009, 10:13 AM UTC

growt wrote: post #4

I haven't tried fabricate yet, but I think the number of build-tools out there is a sure sign that something fundamental is broken.

I think it's just the nature of the beast, and an example of a complex problem with a lot of different solutions.

Re: fabricate: The better "make". Finds dependencies automatically for any language.

#6

Post by herge » Mon, Jul 27, 2009, 10:35 AM UTC

Not to be confused with Fabric (http://www.nongnu.org/fab/), also a very cool python tool.

Re: fabricate: The better "make". Finds dependencies automatically for any language.

#7

Post by sp332 » Mon, Jul 27, 2009, 11:27 AM UTC

growt wrote: post #4

I haven't tried fabricate yet, but I think the number of build-tools out there is a sure sign that something fundamental is broken.

I think it's just down to the popularity of make. People who are starting new projects use make because "everybody's using it, it must be the best!" Then, when make becomes a pain in the butt, they write their own because they've already decided that there's nothing better out there.

Re: fabricate: The better "make". Finds dependencies automatically for any language.

#8

Post by st3fan » Mon, Jul 27, 2009, 11:57 AM UTC

"""For a start, fabricate won't say "* missing separator" if you use spaces instead of tabs.""" - No, but it will say "IndentationError: unindent does not match any outer indentation level" if you mess up Python's indentation :-)

Re: fabricate: The better "make". Finds dependencies automatically for any language.

#9

Post by st3fan » Mon, Jul 27, 2009, 12:00 PM UTC

I wish someone would pick up http://a-a-p.sourceforge.net/ again. It is a great build tool written by the Vim author. I've used it to build complex projects in the past with a minimal amount of aap configuration. It is much less verbose than fabricate.

Re: fabricate: The better "make". Finds dependencies automatically for any language.

#10

Post by loup-vaillant » Mon, Jul 27, 2009, 12:15 PM UTC

benhoyt wrote: post #3

We've been using memoize to build stuff for a while now, but we needed something that worked under Windows too. So here's our "fabricate" build tool. It's BSD licensed -- enjoy!

I don't get it. Does it intercept file accesses to determine the dependencies? Looks like magic.