Apache Ant is a software tool for automating software build processes for Java applications which originated from the Apache Tomcat project in early 2000 as a replacement for the Make build tool of Unix. It is similar to Make, but is implemented using the Java language and requires the Java platform. Unlike Make, which uses the Makefile format, Ant uses XML to describe the code build process and its dependencies.
SCons is a computer software build tool that automatically analyzes source code file dependencies and operating system adaptation requirements from a software project description and generates final binary executables for installation on the target operating system platform. Its function is analogous to the traditional GNU build system based on the make utility and the autoconf tools.
Maven is a build automation tool used primarily for Java projects. Maven can also be used to build and manage projects written in C#, Ruby, Scala, and other languages. The Maven project is hosted by The Apache Software Foundation, where it was formerly part of the Jakarta Project.
In software development, CMake is cross-platform free and open-source software for build automation, testing, packaging and installation of software by using a compiler-independent method. CMake is not a build system itself; it generates another system's build files. It supports directory hierarchies and applications that depend on multiple libraries. It can invoke native build environments such as Make, Qt Creator, Ninja, Android Studio, Apple's Xcode, and Microsoft Visual Studio. It has minimal dependencies, requiring only a C++ compiler on its own build system.
This is a comparison of notable free and open-source configuration management software, suitable for tasks like server configuration, orchestration and infrastructure as code typically performed by a system administrator.
Qbs is a cross-platform free and open-source software for managing the build process of software. It was designed to support large, complex projects, written in any number of programming languages, primarily C/C++.
Nix is a cross-platform package manager. It employs a model in which software packages are each installed into unique directories with immutable contents. These directory names correspond to cryptographic hashes that take into account all dependencies of a package, including other packages managed by Nix.
sbt is an open-source build tool created explicitly for Scala and Java projects. It aims to streamline the procedure of constructing, compiling, testing, and packaging applications, libraries, and frameworks. sbt is highly adaptable, permitting developers to customize the build process according to their project's specific needs.
Rust is a multi-paradigm, general-purpose programming language that emphasizes performance, type safety, and concurrency. It enforces memory safety—meaning that all references point to valid memory—without a garbage collector. To simultaneously enforce memory safety and prevent data races, its "borrow checker" tracks the object lifetime of all references in a program during compilation. Rust was influenced by ideas from functional programming, including immutability, higher-order functions, and algebraic data types. It is popular for systems programming.
Gradle is a build automation tool for multi-language software development. It controls the development process in the tasks of compilation and packaging to testing, deployment, and publishing. Supported languages include Java, C/C++, and JavaScript. Gradle builds on the concepts of Apache Ant and Apache Maven, and introduces a Groovy- and Kotlin-based domain-specific language contrasted with the XML-based project configuration used by Maven. Gradle uses a directed acyclic graph to determine the order in which tasks can be run, through providing dependency management. It runs on the Java Virtual Machine.
Dart is a programming language designed by Lars Bak and Kasper Lund and developed by Google. It can be used to develop web and mobile apps as well as server and desktop applications.
Kotlin is a cross-platform, statically typed, general-purpose high-level programming language with type inference. Kotlin is designed to interoperate fully with Java, and the JVM version of Kotlin's standard library depends on the Java Class Library, but type inference allows its syntax to be more concise. Kotlin mainly targets the JVM, but also compiles to JavaScript or native code via LLVM. Language development costs are borne by JetBrains, while the Kotlin Foundation protects the Kotlin trademark.
React is a free and open-source front-end JavaScript library for building user interfaces based on components. It is maintained by Meta and a community of individual developers and companies.
Bazel is a free and open-source software tool used for the automation of building and testing software. Google uses the build tool Blaze internally and released an open-source port of the Blaze tool as Bazel, named as an anagram of Blaze. Bazel was first released in March 2015 and entered beta by September 2015. Version 1.0 was released in October 2019.
In version-control systems, a monorepo is a software-development strategy in which the code for a number of projects is stored in the same repository. This practice dates back to at least the early 2000s, when it was commonly called a shared codebase. Google, Meta, Microsoft, Uber, Airbnb, and Twitter all employ very large monorepos with varying strategies to scale build systems and version control software with a large volume of code and daily changes.
Yarn is one of the main JavaScript package managers, developed in 2016 by Sebastian McKenzie of Meta for the Node.js JavaScript runtime environment. An alternative to the npm package manager, Yarn was created as a collaboration of Facebook, Exponent, Google, and Tilde to solve consistency, security, and performance problems with large codebases.
Deno is a runtime for JavaScript, TypeScript, and WebAssembly that is based on the V8 JavaScript engine and the Rust programming language. Deno was co-created by Ryan Dahl, who also created Node.js.
