I took a close look to Waf some months ago while searching for the ideal build tool for the projects I had to port. I used to talk a lot with the author and found out that the Waf build system isn't superior at all to other alternatives like CMake. Also, the author just don't care about other OS than Linux (that is partly why KDE haven't made the switch to Waf). In continuation with this idea, the MSVC support is very (very) poor. Also, the author isn't very mind opened (to new ideas). And he don't like CMake ;).
<br><br>The author might have good ideas although but I don't like the way it is implemented.<br><br>Regards,<br>Félix C. Morency<br><br>Date: Mon, 17 Dec 2007 19:38:28 -0500<br>From: "Brandon Van Every" <
<a href="mailto:bvanevery@gmail.com">bvanevery@gmail.com</a>><br>Subject: Re: [CMake] Waf build tool<br>To: <a href="mailto:cmake@cmake.org">cmake@cmake.org</a><br>Message-ID:<br> <<a href="mailto:36a55ab0712171638l5c84a221ib4bb7da1e08562d0@mail.gmail.com">
36a55ab0712171638l5c84a221ib4bb7da1e08562d0@mail.gmail.com</a>><br>Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1<br><br>On Dec 16, 2007 1:11 PM, Gonzalo Garramuño <<a href="mailto:ggarra@advancedsl.com.ar">ggarra@advancedsl.com.ar
</a>> wrote:<br>><br>> In summary, thanks. But, no thanks. With all those problems I did not<br>> even bother checking the speed.<br><br>I got a chuckle out of their self-description on<br><a href="http://www.ohloh.net/tags/build/make" target="_blank">
http://www.ohloh.net/tags/build/make</a> , which one might view as a short<br>list of open source build tools. "Though it comes last in the arena<br>of the build systems, we believe that Waf is a vastly superior<br>
alternative to its competitors (Autotools, Scons, Cmake, Ant, etc) for<br>building software, and especially for open-source projects...." Yep,<br>that's why it's in the top tier of Popular tools! :-) There's
<br>something to be said for tooting your own horn, but not to the extent<br>of making oneself soft or complacent about a competitor's<br>capabilities. I think the day that CMake has really "won" the build<br>
tool wars, we'll be seeing shelfs full of books at Barnes & Noble and<br>tons of jobs listing it as a "must have" skill. I wonder where Waf<br>thinks it is, relative to all of that. Happy with the $0 "we really
<br>don't have to bother with Windows" open source market?<br><br><br>Cheers,<br>Brandon Van Every