pmakefile

Background

Makefile is a fundamental tool when it comes to building software. As a simple way to organize code compilation, it's been part of Unix world for over 40 years. However, it's not a perfect tool. Its cross-platform support is not native yet, and learning curves can be steep. This project aims to provide a practical alternative to Makefile subset for most common use cases.

Software can be reproducible, protable, and maintainable, for regular users and developers, with a simple "P-makefile".

Usage

See the example/ directory where we write a single make in Python using pmakefile and zig cc to cross-compile the QuickJS project for Windows, Linux, and macOS (x86_64 and aarch64), which is a huge task and so far not achieved by any other known makefile written for QuickJS. With pmakefile, writing make promises us excellent portability, static type checking, and simplicity, while depending on only a standard Python distribution.

The pmakefile Python module exports some useful functions, see builtin functions

The pmakefile structure can be given as follows:

from pmakefile import *

phony([
    'all', 'clean', ... # phony targets
])

ROOT = Path(__file__).parent.relative_to(os.getcwd())

@recipe('dep1', 'dep2')
def my_recipe():
    """documentation for my_recipe"""

    # some python statements

Then you can use it in your favorite shell:

pmk help
# pmk all
# pmk clean

Useful Helper Functions

• get_os() -> 'windows' | 'linux' | 'macos'
• log(msg: str, level: 'ok' | 'error' | 'info' | 'debug' | 'warn' | 'normal' = 'normal')
• shell(command: str | list[str], *, env: dict | None = None, noprint: bool = False)
• get_deps(): get direct dependencies of current target
• with proft(title: str): ...: profile the execution time of the code block and report with the given title (when the environment variable PMAKEFILE_PROF is set)
• get_dlext() -> str: get platform-specific dynamic library file extension

License

MIT License is used for this project. See LICENSE for more details.