To Make, Ant and MSBuild

I am not sure if we can assume Ant as the replacement for Makefiles. But i feel they are good in their own ways. Makefiles are extensively used in opensource projects where in one can utilize the power of shell commands and rich set of options.

But the downside of Makefile is the availability of developers to write the build files and maintain. Even in my own experience i have seen many stumbling to resolve build issues. Esp. people who are not much into Unix. But still there are millions of code being compiled using Makefiles and it is definitely there to live long.

On Contrary there is a need for scripts which are easier to maintain/understand/cross-platform. And as always it is, xml is the answer. And build tools like Ant and MSBuild have acquired some reasonably good space share.

There are even cases where Ant to execute a MSBuild (after all just a native OS call considering the .NET framework installed) and MSBuild executing an Ant script.

All said, both the styles are there to remain long until we see a total drift in the way the projects and dependencies are handled. One best benchmark i would say for Makefile is the GNOME project. I guess it would have crossed 110 modules by the time now.

A must read article on Automake in FSM suggested by Ranga.