Manny

Manny builds.

Website · Download · Why Manny?

Manny is a small hackable build system for C and C++.

Build scripts are ordinary elf programs. They generate task descriptions, and Manny turns the selected tasks into a graph, executes independent work in parallel, tracks compiler-discovered dependencies, and explains why something rebuilt.

The graph executor is also a C library. The elf frontend is one way to drive Manny; it is not the architecture Manny is trapped inside.

Manny is currently in early development. The supported host is Windows x64, and the public API and build-state format may still change.

A build

c ::= manny.load("c")

hello ::= c.executable({
	name = "hello",
	sources = { "main.c", "message.c" },
	private_include_directories = { "include" },
})

entries := {}

entries.build = fun() {
	ret manny.build({
		targets = { hello.task },
		options = { workers = 4 },
	})
}

ret entries

Save that as build.elf, then run Manny:

> manny
[1/3 succeeded] compile hello: main.c
[2/3 succeeded] compile hello: message.c
[3/3 succeeded] link hello

> manny --explain
[explain] compile hello: main.c: inputs are not newer than outputs
[1/3 up-to-date] compile hello: main.c
[explain] compile hello: message.c: inputs are not newer than outputs
[2/3 up-to-date] compile hello: message.c
[explain] link hello: inputs are not newer than outputs
[3/3 up-to-date] link hello

c.elf is an optional helper written in elf. It generates ordinary Manny task tables; builds can modify it, replace it, or describe raw tasks directly.

Getting started

The included example requires Visual Studio C++ build tools and clang-cl on the command line.

Download and extract the latest Windows preview. Open a command prompt in its hello directory, then run:

..\manny.exe
..\manny.exe run
..\manny.exe --explain

See the complete getting-started guide for building Manny itself.

Documentation

• Why Manny?
• Getting started
• Tasks and graphs
• C and C++ targets
• Command line
• Embedding Manny

The canonical sources live under docs.

Build from source

git clone --recursive https://github.com/MicroRJ/Manny.git
cd Manny
build.bat

The checked-in blessed executable bootstraps the build. The new executable is written to build\manny.exe.

Current limitations

• Only the Windows platform implementation is complete.
• Linux support is planned but not yet implemented.
• MSVC dependency handling is not complete; Clang, clang-cl, and GCC-style Make dependency files are the mature path.
• There is no remote or content-addressed build cache yet.
• Tasks do not yet have isolated environment overrides.
• The C API and binary state format are still allowed to evolve.