Xmake: A cross-platform build utility based on Lua

Post by danny0z » Thu, Jan 29, 2026, 2:53 PM UTC

warmwaffles wrote: post #29

lazypenguin wrote: post #24

A teammate evaluated this and the experience was night and day compared to cmake + vcpkg. However, there wasn’t a lot of motivation to cutover our existing large project over because of the unknown unknowns. I think projects like these looking to dethrone the status quo definitely need some case studies or examples of larger projects using it to increase confidence because I’d much rather use xmake over cmake if it c…

I use it for personal projects and I find it substantially easier to mess around with compiling shaders to SPIRV, processing assets, etc... But some of my gripes are, although it _is_ lua, there is some magic fuckery going on. When you specify targets, things for that target need to be close to the definition, and it feels very odd in a lua language to not have `target("name", function (ctx) ... end)`. Anyways, not g…

  target("foo", function ()
      set_kind("binary")
      add_files("src/*.cpp")
      add_defines("FOO")
  end)

Post by numeromancer » Thu, Jan 29, 2026, 4:01 PM UTC

danny0z wrote: post #31

warmwaffles wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I use it for personal projects and I find it substantially easier to mess around with compiling shaders to SPIRV, processing assets, etc... But some of my gripes are, although it _is_ lua, there is some magic fuckery going on. When you specify targets, things for that target need to be close to the definition, and it feels very odd in a lua language to not have `target("name", function (ctx) ... end)`. Anyways, not g…

> not have `target("name", function (ctx) ... end)`. It supports this syntax. https://xmake.io/guide/project-configuration/syntax-descript... target("foo", function () set_kind("binary") add_files("src/*.cpp") add_defines("FOO") end)

    target("foo", {
      kind = "binary",
      files = { "src/*.cpp" },
      includedirs = { "src" },
      defines = { "FOO", "BAR=BAZ" },
    })

    target {
      name = "foo",
      kind = "binary",
      files = { "src/*.cpp" },
      includedirs = { "src" },
      defines = { "FOO", "BAR=BAZ" },
    }

Post by danny0z » Thu, Jan 29, 2026, 4:09 PM UTC

numeromancer wrote: post #33

danny0z wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> not have `target("name", function (ctx) ... end)`. It supports this syntax. https://xmake.io/guide/project-configuration/syntax-descript... target("foo", function () set_kind("binary") add_files("src/*.cpp") add_defines("FOO") end)

I think the creators did it a disservice to xmake when they tried to unluaize the syntax. You can also do: target("foo", { kind = "binary", files = { "src/*.cpp" }, includedirs = { "src" }, defines = { "FOO", "BAR=BAZ" }, }) which suits Lua better. Unfortunately you cannot do target { name = "foo", kind = "binary", files = { "src/*.cpp" }, includedirs = { "src" }, defines = { "FOO", "BAR=BAZ" }, } which would be the…

    target("foo", {
      kind = "binary",
      files = { "src/*.cpp" },
      includedirs = { "src" },
      defines = { "FOO", "BAR=BAZ" },
    })

Post by numeromancer » Thu, Jan 29, 2026, 4:23 PM UTC

danny0z wrote: post #35

numeromancer wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think the creators did it a disservice to xmake when they tried to unluaize the syntax. You can also do: target("foo", { kind = "binary", files = { "src/*.cpp" }, includedirs = { "src" }, defines = { "FOO", "BAR=BAZ" }, }) which suits Lua better. Unfortunately you cannot do target { name = "foo", kind = "binary", files = { "src/*.cpp" }, includedirs = { "src" }, defines = { "FOO", "BAR=BAZ" }, } which would be the…

It also supports this syntax. target("foo", { kind = "binary", files = { "src/*.cpp" }, includedirs = { "src" }, defines = { "FOO", "BAR=BAZ" }, }) https://xmake.io/guide/project-configuration/syntax-descript...

Post by mrlonglong » Thu, Jan 29, 2026, 7:18 PM UTC