xmake

The least painful C/C++ build tool I've used is xmake https://github.com/xmake-io/xmake The reason why I like it (beyond ease-of-use) is that it can spit out CMakeLists.txt and compile_commands.json for IDE/LSP integration and also supports installing Conan/vcpkg libraries or even Git repos. set_project("myapp") set_languages("c++20") add_requires("conan::fmt/11.0.2", {alias = "fmt"}) add_requires("vcpkg::fmt", {alias = "fmt"}) add_requires("git://github.com/fmtlib/fmt v11.0.2", {alias = "fmt"}) target("myapp") set_kind("binary") add_files("src/*.cpp") add_packages("fmt") Then you use it like # Generate compile_commands.json and CMakeLists.txt $ xmake project -k compile_commands $ xmake project -k cmake # Build + run $ xmake && xmake run myapp

It can generate a Visual Studio project, then use the xmake CLI to integrate and compile the project, and supports debugging and IntelliSense. https://xmake.io/guide/extensions/builtin-plugins.html#gener... C++ Modules examples: https://xmake.io/examples/cpp/cxx-modules.html https://github.com/xmake-io/xmake/tree/dev/tests/projects/c%...

it has a feature to output such files, see https://github.com/xmake-io/xmake?tab=readme-ov-file#generat...

For a brief moment I thought it was about Premake [1] under a different name, but after checking xmake's Discussions [2] I have found the answer I was looking for. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Premake [2] https://github.com/xmake-io/xmake/discussions/1863

it took some digging to find "does xmake use xmake" since it's down in the src folder but here's a concrete example https://github.com/xmake-io/xmake/blob/v2.8.9/core/xmake.lua and https://github.com/xmake-io/xmake/blob/v2.8.9/core/src/xmake... but I couldn't decipher what the matching .sh files do, if anything

we can also try xmake. https://github.com/xmake-io/xmake Xmake can be used to directly build source code (like with Make or Ninja), or it can generate project source files like CMake or Meson. It also has a built-in package management system to help users integrate C/C++ dependencies.

Apart from c, lua is my favourite language. c + lua is the perfect combination and I have developed a lua-based build system using them. https://github.com/xmake-io/xmake

try wget https://github.com/xmake-io/xmake/releases/download/v2.6.5/xmake-v2.6.5.tar.gz tar xf xmake-v2.6.5.tar.gz make build we need not run `cd xmake`