================= Buildcloth README

You can download buildcloth from pypi <https://pypi.python.org/pypi/buildcloth>, or read the documentation <http://cyborginstitute.org/projects/buildcloth> for a complete introduction to Buildcloth.

Overview

Buildcloth is a Python library for specifying build systems. You can think of Buildcloth as a meta-build toolkit, but it's really about defining and maintaining complex multi-stage processes as easily as possible. There are three different tools in the buildcloth toolkit:

• Simple procedural interfaces for generating build system definition files for Make_ and Ninja_, in easy to use Python.

• A higher level cross-tool abstraction layer for specifying build-rules that you can use to generate :term:Makefile and :term:ninja.build output.

• A simple stage-based Python tool for defining and running concurrent (i.e. multiprocessing) Python-based build systems with minimal overhead.

Although these components are distinct and are available for independent use, they provide a basis for building and combining ad-hoc tools to orchestrate and implement build systems, without risking insanity or fragility.

Features

• Buildcloth is agnostic about your approach to storing build generator data: the build cloth system may generate build systems from YAML or JSON files, database systems, derive information from the source directly.

• If you're comfortable with basic Python code and understand your build process, you can use Buildcloth.

  For generating Make and Ninja files, Buildcloth minimizes the amount of Make or Ninja-specific knowledge required to engineer an effective build system. At the same time, the build-system output can be very human readable, which makes debugging easier and minimizes dependence on buildcloth.

  For stage-based builds, Buildcloth provides straight forward idiomatic Python tools for defining a build system.

• Buildcloth is attempting to insulate build system implementation from your build system, making it easier to transition between (and test) Make, Ninja, and potentially other custom tools.

.. _Ninja: http://martine.github.com/ninja/ .. _Make: http://www.gnu.org/software/make/manual/make.html

Use

See the project documentation <http://cyborginstitute.org/projects/buildcloth>_ for full usage information. In particular, consider the api reference <http://cyborginstitute.org/projects/buildcloth/api/>_ and the general tutorial <http://cyborginstitute.org/projects/buildcloth/tutorial/>_.

Project Information

• Issue Tracker <https://issues.cyborginstitute.net/describecomponents.cgi?product=buildcloth>_
• git repository <http://git.cyborginstitute.net/?p=buildcloth.git>_
• github <http://github.com/tychoish/buildcloth/>_
• documentation <http://cyborginstitute.org/projects/buildcloth>_
• pypi <https://pypi.python.org/pypi/buildcloth>_