weld the (not just for) FreeBASIC build system

weld is a simple replacement for most uses of make and similiar tools. Unlike other systems weld is not a full blown, Turing complete language, it is just a simple way to describe most software sources. weld is still a young project but is fairly stable already.

Installation:

• Simply copy "weld.exe" to a directory that is in your PATH.
• You will need to set an environment variable on Windows so weld can find your freebasic compiler. The variable is: fbc=C:\path\to\fbc\fbc.exe How To Manage Environment Variables in Windows XP, the process is very similar for Vista and 7.

Mercurial Source Control hosted by Google Code. Download: (new version)

• weld-0-99-7b.zip (98k) from jafile.com
• weld-0-99-7b.zip (98k) from googlecode.com

Limitations:

• Comments are specified with the character # but are only ignored at the beginning (after removal of whitespace) of a line and after a section header.
• Several convenience functions I have planned are not implemented at this time including: glob file specifiers and others.
• While theoretically it should work with other compilers (like gcc) that feature has not been tested. If you'd like to test it out check out how to define a new compiler in "parser.bas"
• There currently is no "include" functionality so everything about your project must be in the same file.
• Simplicity comes at the cost of the inability to do a lot of what other systems can do. But those don't come with a option to "automagically" generate a build file now do they :p
• Support for other compilers is preliminary at this point, for example gcc and g++ do not support building static libraries because gcc and g++ do not natively support building them, you have to use ar. This will be fixed in a later release.

Changelog:

0.99.7

• Fixes some errors that could cause a broken build.
• Added build number support default FreeBASIC compiler defines __WELD_BUILDN=buildnumber, other languages can use the $buildno replacement for a similar option for that language.
• Also, now if there is no weld.it file in the current directory but there is a src directory weld will automatically retry with src as the current directory.

.99.6

• Mostly just bugfixes and more replacements of fake with weld.
• Major bug involving autogeneration where it would require both -am and -ao when only one is necessary (both can be used though).
• Major bug involving library compilation where you would get errors about main already being defined was fixed.

.99.5

• Added Global and User (*nix and win32 only) level configuration file support. Global file is:
  • Windows: exepath\global.config
  • *nix: /etc/weld/global.config
  • DOS: exepath\weld.cfg

  User file is:

  • Windows: %APPDATA%\weld.config
  • *nix: ~/.weld.config

  Configurations are parsed in the order GLOBAL - USER - LOCAL. Only Compiler and Global sections are recognized at the GLOBAL and USER levels. Later definitions overwrite existing values. A sample global configuration file is provided in the Data directory providing support for fbc, gcc and g++.

• Compiler definitions now support multiple file extensions.

.99d

• Added @platform: specifiers to module parsing, supported values are win32, dos and unix
• Changed default behaviour when a file with extension is passed to attempt to use a weld.it in that directory for IDE compatibility.
• Added option -r/--run for IDE compatibility

Command line option listing: Located here now.

License Information: Standard 3-clause BSD License