NINimi·Nov 1, 2014
See here for a comparison of various build systems, including tup:
https://github.com/ndmitchell/build-shootout#readme
In The Tup Build Systemndmitchell
build-shootout
Haskell2014–2014
ndmitchell / build-shootout
build-shootout
Comparison of build program expressive power
3Distinct people
3Mentions
0Explicit recommenders
87GitHub stars
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What it is
Comparison of build program expressive power
GitHub
Where it is used
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What people are saying
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This week on Hacker News
Nov 7–Nov 14 UTC · Direct repository links and separately labeled related project stories. Indexed through 11/14/2026, 3:56:07 PM UTC.
No direct repository links were found in the indexed HN discussions over the past seven days. Older discussions are available below.
Mentions over time
HN mentions by week3 dated mentions
Observed mentions: 2014-04-21 23:25:23 UTC to 2014-11-01 10:11:44 UTC. Weeks start Monday, UTC.
Counts come from the repository’s dated source evidence. Index cutoff: 2026-11-02 08:16:59 UTC.
View mention counts and date ranges
| Period | Start (UTC) | End (exclusive, UTC) | Mentions | Submissions | Comments |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Apr 21 | 2014-04-21 00:00:00 UTC | 2014-04-28 00:00:00 UTC | 1 | 0 | 1 |
| Apr 28 | 2014-04-28 00:00:00 UTC | 2014-05-05 00:00:00 UTC | 0 | 0 | 0 |
| May 5 | 2014-05-05 00:00:00 UTC | 2014-05-12 00:00:00 UTC | 0 | 0 | 0 |
| May 12 | 2014-05-12 00:00:00 UTC | 2014-05-19 00:00:00 UTC | 0 | 0 | 0 |
| May 19 | 2014-05-19 00:00:00 UTC | 2014-05-26 00:00:00 UTC | 0 | 0 | 0 |
| May 26 | 2014-05-26 00:00:00 UTC | 2014-06-02 00:00:00 UTC | 0 | 0 | 0 |
| Jun 2 | 2014-06-02 00:00:00 UTC | 2014-06-09 00:00:00 UTC | 0 | 0 | 0 |
| Jun 9 | 2014-06-09 00:00:00 UTC | 2014-06-16 00:00:00 UTC | 0 | 0 | 0 |
| Jun 16 | 2014-06-16 00:00:00 UTC | 2014-06-23 00:00:00 UTC | 0 | 0 | 0 |
| Jun 23 | 2014-06-23 00:00:00 UTC | 2014-06-30 00:00:00 UTC | 0 | 0 | 0 |
| Jun 30 | 2014-06-30 00:00:00 UTC | 2014-07-07 00:00:00 UTC | 0 | 0 | 0 |
| Jul 7 | 2014-07-07 00:00:00 UTC | 2014-07-14 00:00:00 UTC | 0 | 0 | 0 |
| Jul 14 | 2014-07-14 00:00:00 UTC | 2014-07-21 00:00:00 UTC | 0 | 0 | 0 |
| Jul 21 | 2014-07-21 00:00:00 UTC | 2014-07-28 00:00:00 UTC | 0 | 0 | 0 |
| Jul 28 | 2014-07-28 00:00:00 UTC | 2014-08-04 00:00:00 UTC | 1 | 1 | 0 |
| Aug 4 | 2014-08-04 00:00:00 UTC | 2014-08-11 00:00:00 UTC | 0 | 0 | 0 |
| Aug 11 | 2014-08-11 00:00:00 UTC | 2014-08-18 00:00:00 UTC | 0 | 0 | 0 |
| Aug 18 | 2014-08-18 00:00:00 UTC | 2014-08-25 00:00:00 UTC | 0 | 0 | 0 |
| Aug 25 | 2014-08-25 00:00:00 UTC | 2014-09-01 00:00:00 UTC | 0 | 0 | 0 |
| Sep 1 | 2014-09-01 00:00:00 UTC | 2014-09-08 00:00:00 UTC | 0 | 0 | 0 |
| Sep 8 | 2014-09-08 00:00:00 UTC | 2014-09-15 00:00:00 UTC | 0 | 0 | 0 |
| Sep 15 | 2014-09-15 00:00:00 UTC | 2014-09-22 00:00:00 UTC | 0 | 0 | 0 |
| Sep 22 | 2014-09-22 00:00:00 UTC | 2014-09-29 00:00:00 UTC | 0 | 0 | 0 |
| Sep 29 | 2014-09-29 00:00:00 UTC | 2014-10-06 00:00:00 UTC | 0 | 0 | 0 |
| Oct 6 | 2014-10-06 00:00:00 UTC | 2014-10-13 00:00:00 UTC | 0 | 0 | 0 |
| Oct 13 | 2014-10-13 00:00:00 UTC | 2014-10-20 00:00:00 UTC | 0 | 0 | 0 |
| Oct 20 | 2014-10-20 00:00:00 UTC | 2014-10-27 00:00:00 UTC | 0 | 0 | 0 |
| Oct 27 | 2014-10-27 00:00:00 UTC | 2014-11-03 00:00:00 UTC | 1 | 0 | 1 |
What Hacker News says
3 sourcesI've been thinking a lot about build systems lately. I enjoy the discussion that this post has provoked. The post itself is weaker than it could have been, in that it does not stick to a single example when comparing build tools, and does not pin down any criteria for distinguishing between build tools.
If you are interested in a comparison of a few interesting build tools, please check out Neil Mitchell's "build system shootout" : https://github.com/ndmitchell/build-shootout . Neil is the author of the `Shake` build system. The shootout compares `Make`, `Ninja`, `Shake`, `tup` and `fabricate`.
Another possibly interesting build tool is `buck`, although it is primarily aimed at java / android development. See http://facebook.github.io/buck/ . There's a little discussion about `gerrit`'s move to `buck` here: http://www.infoq.com/news/2013/
Read the rest
10/gerrit-buck .
Here's some questions I'd ask of a build system:
- is it mature?
- which platforms does it support?
- which language ecosystems does it support? (language-agnostic? C/C++? ruby? python? java?)
- does it support parallel builds?
- does it support incremental builds?
- are incremental builds accurate?
- is it primarily file-based?
- how does it decide when build targets are up-to-date, if at all? (e.g. timestamps, md5 hash of content, notification from the operating system)
- does it allow build scripts for different components to be defined across multiple files and handled during the same build?
- does it enforce a particular structure upon your build scripts that makes them more maintainable?
- how does it automatically discover dependencies, if at all? (e.g. parsing source files, asking the compiler, builds instrumented via FUSE/strace)
- how easy is it to debug?
- is it possible to extend in a full-featured programming language?
- does it let you augment the build dependency graph mid-way through execution of a build?
- how simply can it be used with other tools such as your chosen continuous integration server, test framework(s), build artifact caches, etc?
Many of these criteria are completely overkill for trivial build tasks, where you don't really need anything fancy.