Why We Need Build Systems
Build systems were developed to simplify and automate running the compiler and linker and are an essential part of modern software development. This blog post is a precursor to future posts discussing our experiences refactoring the training projects to use the CMake build generator.
Build systems can be standalone command line applications such as Make, Scons and Ninja; or part of an (Integrated Development Environment IDE) like Visual Studio , XCode or IAR Workbench.
Configuring build systems for a project can be complex and there are a few applications around that will generate the required build files from a simpler project configuration file. The most popular of these tools are CMake, which generates files for several build systems, and Meson, which generates Ninja build files.
A 2021 survey by the Standard C++ Foundation showed that CMake was used by 4 out of 5 of the respondents, while Meson and scons are each used by less than 1 in 20. The survey also showed that Make/nmake and MSBuild (Visual Studio) are used roughly equally by 2 out of 5 people and Ninja by 1 out of every 3. In many cases the respondents will be using more than one build system across multiple projects.
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