A build system or build automation tool is a

tool A tool is an Physical object, object that can extend an individual's ability to modify features of the surrounding environment or help them accomplish a particular task. Although many Tool use by animals, animals use simple tools, only human bei ...

or set of tools that automate the compilation and linking of

source code In computing, source code, or simply code or source, is a plain text computer program written in a programming language. A programmer writes the human readable source code to control the behavior of a computer. Since a computer, at base, only ...

into an

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program or

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. It streamlines the

software development Software development is the process of designing and Implementation, implementing a software solution to Computer user satisfaction, satisfy a User (computing), user. The process is more encompassing than Computer programming, programming, wri ...

process by managing dependencies, resolving conflicts, and ensuring consistent builds across different environments. When software projects grow complex, their build steps may involve multiple

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or compilation units, making manual build processes increasingly cumbersome. Dependencies between code components necessitate careful ordering and potentially different tools for each piece. Managing these dependencies manually can quickly lead to version conflicts, stale binaries, and difficulty tracking updates, making solutions such as shell scripts too difficult to maintain. While individual developers might compile code directly, a robust build system is foundational to efficient software development in large organizations and teams, where automated builds become commonplace and most builds are triggered automatically rather than manually. Given the essential role of build systems, it is said that they act as "repositories of essential build knowledge". They effectively eliminate roadblocks and accelerates development velocity by enabling engineers to share resources and results.

Key features

Most build systems include features that make building large projects easier: * Dependency management: Resolving and tracking dependencies between components. * Incremental builds: Only rebuilding what has changed. * Cross-platform support: Building for multiple environments (e.g.,

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Linux Linux ( ) is a family of open source Unix-like operating systems based on the Linux kernel, an kernel (operating system), operating system kernel first released on September 17, 1991, by Linus Torvalds. Linux is typically package manager, pac ...

macOS macOS, previously OS X and originally Mac OS X, is a Unix, Unix-based operating system developed and marketed by Apple Inc., Apple since 2001. It is the current operating system for Apple's Mac (computer), Mac computers. With ...

). * Parallel builds: Speeding up builds by running tasks concurrently. * Extensibility: Supporting plugins or custom scripts.

References

{{Reflist Build automation Software development

Key features

See also

References