The Design of a New C++ Build Toolchain

Explore the design and development of build2, a new C++ build toolchain, in this comprehensive conference talk from CppNow. Delve into interesting problems in cross-platform C++ building and distribution, including cross-compilation, in/out-of-source builds, interaction of generated source code with automatic dependency extraction, and high fidelity builds. Examine how seemingly benign decisions like relative vs absolute paths can impact powerful features such as updating multiple projects with a single build tool invocation. Learn about the challenges in testing, installation, and preparation of distributions in C++ build systems. Discover approaches to capturing requirements and conditional dependencies in packaging, ensuring package authenticity, and establishing submission policies for package repositories like cppget.org. Gain insights into the evolution of build2, including the introduction of a package manager (bpkg), a repository web interface (brep), and the public repository of open source C++ packages, cppget.org.

Boris Kolpackov: The Design of a New C++ Build Toolchain