CppCon 2018

Few will argue that a standard build system would greatly benefit the C++ community. And the change is in the air: the upcoming C++ Modules are bound to shake things up, the need to support multiple build systems is putting pressure on our packaging efforts, and languages like Rust and Go clearly show things work much better if the build system and package manager are well integrated. Perhaps then this is the C++ community's "git moment": an opportunity to get a next-generation build system that everyone is finally happy to use.

In this talk I will demonstrate key features the next-generation C++ build system should have in order to achieve that elusive happy-to-use property. It is based on our experience developing the build2 toolchain, an integrated build system and package/project dependency managers (and which already supports C++ Modules).

We start with a brief discussion of overall design choices: native or project generator/meta build system, black box or a concept of build, declarative or scripted (or perhaps a hybrid), uniform or platform-specific, in which language can/should it be implemented, and, finally, what about IDE/tools integration?

Next, we go over what any current-generation build system should already support: build configuration management, cross-compilation, additional operations (test, install/uninstall, dist), out of source builds, and wildcard patterns.

Then on to the next-generation: high-fidelity hermetic builds, precise change detection, portable, parallel testing, project importing/composability, and support for C++ Modules which should pave the way to reliable, generally-available distribution compilation.