build-sh

Fast and simple build script for C/C++ projects.

It works similarly to GNU Make and it is great for short and simple apps with few source files.

Features

simple configuration file for compiler flags
rebuilds only modified files

Usage

1. Create project directory

mkdir newproject
cd newproject

2. Download build script and make it executable

wget https://raw.githubusercontent.com/arturtamborski/build-sh/master/build.sh
chmod u+x build.sh

3. Run build script

./build.sh
ls
bin  build.cfg  build.sh  src

Script created some dirs and files for your project:

bin/ - directory for object / binary files
src/ - directory for source files
build.sh - build script
build.cfg - configuration file used by build script

4. Edit your files and run script again

vim ./src/main.c
./build.sh
ls -R
bin/main.o  build.cfg  build.sh  newproject  src/main.c

newproject - executable compiled from object files (named after current directory)
bin/main.o - output file
src/main.c - source file

5. That's it! Now you can modify your code and repeat compilation without a hassle.

./newproject
Hello World!

Configuration file

[EXEC_NAME] - Executable file name
[COMPILER] - Compiler command
[COMPILER_FLAGS] - Compiler flags
[LINKER] - Linker command
[LINKER_FLAGS] - Linker flags

Other tags will be ignored. Values can span over several lines.

Comments are marked by '#' sign and they must start in new line.

[COMPILER_FLAGS]
# valid comment
-Wall # this is *INVALID*

Example:

[EXEC_NAME]
# here you can change the default name for compiled app
# if you don't want it to be set to default then remove this tag
mysuperappname

[COMPILER]
/usr/bin/gcc

[COMPILER_FLAGS]
# -c flag is very important!
-c
-g
-std=c11

[LINKER]
/usr/bin/gcc

[LINKER_FLAGS]
-L/usr/lib
-lreadline

Smart compiling

Script compares modification time of source file and corresponding object file, then it checks which one was modified first.

If source file was modified after object file then it needs to be recompiled, but if source file was not modified since creation of corresponding object file then it can be skipped.

If you would like to do full build then just remove /bin directory or delete every file in it.

rm -r ./bin
./build.sh # build all

Vim integration

You can put those lines in .vimrc to make simple binds to build script.

" <F7> Will run full build
nnoremap <F7> :!rm -r ./bin && ./build.sh <CR>

" <F8> Will run smart build
nnoremap <F8> :!./build.sh <CR>

" Super hacky thing(TM) to run compiled program by calling :!./thing
" where thing is the last directory from current working path.
" Works great with ./build.sh but only if you **do not** change [EXEC_NAME] tag.
let out_program = "./" . system("basename `pwd`")
nnoremap <F9> :exe ":!" . out_program <CR>

TODO

add support for multiple files with same names that are placed in different directories
add more customization in build.cfg?
check modification of header files and recompile files that use twhem
add a way to define verbosity and pretty printing