fastconf -- an alternate build system

Motivation

The pretty obvious one -- lack of a simple, clean and fast build system.

Autotools are complex, slow and complex. They try to retain backwards compatibility with dead systems which no longer can handle packages which are being built with autotools. They unnecessarily avoid useful 'modern' shell features while horribly breaking compatibility with those being not much of a use.

Have you ever seen fast configure script? I have. The source file looked like that:

AC_INIT

As you might expect, the resulting configure script will do nothing. Try to run it:

$ autoconf
$ time ./configure 

real    0m2.206s
user    0m1.275s
sys 0m1.023s

Pretty long for a no-op, ain't it?

How is fastconf different?

fastconf is supposed to be simple, modular and fast. It tries to gain from the features of a POSIX system without pulling in external dependencies. It is written in plain POSIX shell script and it writes POSIX Makefiles. That's all.

The main performance gain comes from the fact that all the configure checks aren't performed by the shell script (like autoconf does) but in the actual make invocation. Thus, they work in an environment similar to the actual build and gain from the parallel make invocation. In fact, AFAIK fastconf is the only build system right now doing checks in parallel.

What are the features of fastconf?

fastconf is in a pretty early stage of development right now. It lacks a lot of functions necessary to be used in a more complex project, and I haven't frozen even the first version of the API yet.

However, right now fastconf itself is able to:

• recognize most of the autotools-compatible configure script options,
• choose a C compiler respecting ${CC} and --host,
• perform simple C tests and build simple C targets (not libraries),
• install files in a POSIX-compliant manner (not relying on 'install').

How to use fastconf in your project?

Please see the GUIDE file for information on the topic.