ant+cpptasks vs. scons vs. make

Question

I\'m looking into scons and I just want to make sure I know what the alternatives are, before I invest a chunk of brain cells into something completely different. I\'ve been usi

Answer 1

I've used Ant+CppTasks heavily a few years back for building very large code bases being integrated into new Java code via JNI, and was very satisfied with the outcome of very reliable incremental builds of C++ code, good flexility (in build files, or via tweaks to the code). BUT, CppTasks is a project with no community and the maintainer (Curt Arnold) hasn't done anything with it for a long time. It remains very good and useful, but be aware that very few people know or use CppTasks (the way compilers "bid" for files bite me for example when I needed a specific compiler for C files, and the different C++ compiler was picking these up instead).

The way CppTasks keeps track of compile options, and dynamically scans sources for header dependencies, all the time yet fast enough (there's some caching of dependencies), meant the only system I've worked with that had accurate incremental builds, something very important when building very large code bases.

So as I've said a few times on the Ant user/dev lists, if you have a lot of Java stuff and already have an investment in Ant, and are not afraid of diving into the doc and the code of CppTasks, and now need to build JNI "glue" code, and/or the "legacy" native libraries the glue code exposes, it's a worthwhile contender, and the rewards can be great.

I easily integrated for the Windows dll to add complete version info, for example, writing a little Ant task to format the .res file correctly. It worked for me, but Ant+CppTasks is definitely more for the "advanced" Ant user / developer IMHO.

I hope this helps. --DD