mace: homemade build system

I built my own build system! It is called mace. It took about a month of part-time work… This too is a free time only project.

Ever since my post how all other build systems suck, this has been in the back of my mind. I couldn’t figure out a satisfying way to implement my own until about two months ago: I discovered the mage build system. It uses go to build go. How elegant! I needed to do the same for C.

The most recent version is 1.2.1, fully functional with installer macefile, tab completion, convenience executable that can be used like make with similar flags and environment variables. Now I can ignore any and all other build systems. If this one doesn’t work as I want it, I will just modify it.

• Builds C only
• Uses C to build C: macefiles are C files.
• Very easy to learn, familiar syntax.
• Familiar command-line interface similar to make
• As easy to build as writing and compiling a hello world C program, or easier!

I hope you find this one sucks a bit less than the other build systems!