DragonBuild

Much faster ninja-based tweak compiler

DragonBuild uses logos.pl for logos support. You don't need to have theos installed to use it.

DragonBuild does not auto-import Foundation/UIKit headers.. That will likely not change, as it's good practice to do so yourself.

DragonBuild

Notes

This was built for MacOS, although I've done a little bit of testing on Linux. If it does not detect ldid in the path, it will look in $DRAGONBUILD/toolchain/bin/ for a toolchain. I would advise properly installing sbinger's toolchain to your path, as this is somewhat hacked in at the moment.

Basic Usage

dragon [gen] [build] [clean] [install]

dragon gen Generate the ninja build file. Handled automatically now.

dragon build Build the project

dragon clean Force a rebuild even when no changes are detected

dragon install Install the project to the device located at $DRBIP

Installing DragonBuild

brew install ninja perl

Choose the directory to install DragonBuild in. cd to it, then:

git clone https://github.com/KritantaDev/DragonBuild.git

Then, add the following to your ~/.bash_profile (or whatever you use)
export DRAGONBUILD=path/for/DragonBuild
alias dragon=$DRAGONBUILD/dragon

Consider adding

export DRBIP=<your phone ip>

This will allow you to use dragon i to install packages to your device.

Setting your project up for DragonBuild

Creating a DragonMake File

DragonBuild uses DragonMake files as a stand-in replacement for Makefiles.

Name	Possible Values	Description
TWEAK_NAME	*	Name of the tweak. Should match your tweak's plist name
TWEAK_TYPE	Tweak, Prefs, SubTweak, Library	The type of file to build. SubTweak is a tweak to be packaged with the tweak in its superdirectory
LOGOS_FILE	.x/.xm	A file that $THEOS/logos.pl should preprocess. If you have an .xm file put it here
ARCHS	arm7 / arm64 / arm64e	Typical ARCHS stuff you're used to with THEOS
MINIOS	.	e.g. 10.0; Target iOS Version
CFLAGS	*	Flags you wish to pass to clang
TWEAK_FILES	.m/.mm	Files to be compiled with your tweak. Anything compilable goes here. Bash syntax is supported
INSTALL_CMD	*	What should be executed over ssh after installing the package
LIBS	*	Libraries to link. objc and objc++ are automatically included.
FRAMEWORKS	*	Frameworks to compile against. CoreFoundation, Foundation, UIKit, CoreGraphics, and QuartzCore are included by default, along with Preferences, if TWEAK_TYPE is "Prefs"
SUBPROJECTS	*	Folder name of Subprojects (prefs, subtweaks, etc)

Example DragonMake files for a Tweak and a SubTweak can be found in ./ExampleProject

Generating the build script

This is now done automatically.

Building and installing your Tweak

dragon build to build (dragon make and dragon b also work)

dragon install to install (dragon i also works)

Forcing a rebuild

Using the c or clean command will perform a clean regen and rebuild of your project.

Credits

@theiostream, for this commit, which got me started on understanding how to compile tweaks with clang

@Siguza, for writing ./bin/tbdump, the tool used to symbolicate libraries that can be compiled for this.

@sbinger, for patiently helping me add arm64e support to tbdump (turns out its easy when you know what you're doing :))

@theos, and the badass team there, who created a good amount of the resources this project depends on.

Under the Hood

DragonBuild stemmed from my attempt (purely out of boredom, in all honesty) to compile a tweak using a build.ninja file. There was absolutely no documentation on doing so whatsoever, since everyone seems to use GNU Make + Theos for building since iOS 4>. After getting a tweak running, I decided to try and create a Theos replacement/augmentation that generates ninja files and builds from those.

Ninja Build file Generator

Currently, DragonBuild uses an incredibly elementary method of template build.ninja files and sed macros to fill these out. The "DragonMake" file acts as a bash source script and defines some variables we first escape, and then pass to sed.

Once we have a ninja file, we're set. You can compile a dylib now using ninja. The generated ninja file will also sign it.

This isn't quite enough for a complete package though; we still need to copy over our .plist, control file, subprojects, and such into a directory structure. We then use dpkg-deb to build it, and scp to install. ez pz.

Currently, ninja handles preprocessing, compiling, linking, and signing. Ideally, ninja will handle everything. ninja allows bash commands, so it is only limited by its generator.

I hope to see the complexity of DragonBuild's ninja generator increase, and the complexity of the rest of DragonBuild decrease, as ninja is much better suited to most of this.

Ninja Build files

I am forever indebted to this specific commit of this specific project.

Having had no experience working without theos before hopping into this, and with online documentation essentially not existing (you need to know what you're doing to find out how to do what you're doing,) this makefile was enough for me to be able to get a working build.ninja

A build.ninja file has quite similar syntax to this raw makefile. As a matter of fact, I'd imagine this file would compile very very quickly even with gnu make. At the end of the day, if you were able to cut it down to the basics, a final theos makefile for a project might look similar to this.

One place where dragon cuts down insanely on build times is static generation. Theos (someone from @theos please clarify this, i'm probably wrong) takes your makefile, adds in its own premade makefiles, and finally compiles using gnu make.

Dragon, on the other hand, takes advantage of static generation. You give it a DragonMake file, it generates the final output in .dragon/ninja/build.ninja, and keeps it there till regenerated. Generation is done using bash substitution of basic variables provided in DragonMake, and is quite fast, since it takes advantage of premade template files.

The generated build.ninja has instructions to compile every one of the files it was directed to compile in the DragonMake, and uses a similar system to GNU Make in that it will hash files and only rebuild if needed. It is very good at doing this quickly. A no-op build of a project containing two subprojects takes 2s. The same no-op takes 14s with make package -j 16.

As my experience with generators and ninja increases, I'm confident I can bring these times down even further.

Am1nCmd/DragonBuild