Xnt is a high-level wrapper build tool for better managing your projects’ build process. It allows you to include multiple sub-build tools (such as: make, ant, nant and potentially more) in a single project while exposing a single and simple interface.
Why you should use Xnt:
Contents:
When writing something such as a build tool, there is always the question: “why?”. Why write yet another build tool?
Well, there are several reasons that are the backing motivation:
First, developing a variety of software, using one and only one build tool for every project is nearly (if not entirely) impossible. There is a desire to have a consistent build step and process when testing and deploying. Given the environment in which the code is written is heterogeneous, having one uniform build tool that wraps itself around the other ones (and has the ability to expand to new ones) is ideal.
Second, short of dropping into the language the build tool was written in, expanding some build steps is very difficult (or at least can be). Further there can be complicated build targets that require some interesting and potentially involved (smelly) procedures to be accomplished, that may or may not be easy to describe in the build file or in the native language. Therefore, having a wrapping build framework/ tool that is written in an easy to read and write language, such as Python, these complicated steps can depend less on some funky new build library (further adding to the dependency tree) and can become just implementation details (assuming, of course, you buy into Xnt first).
Last, and most certainly the least, I wanted to explore the idea. I wanted to write something that made me think about solving some of the problems challenged by such a tool.
To install, you can either install from source or use Pip.
There are a few dependencies that Xnt requires and a few that are completely optional, depending on your intended use.
For developers, there are a few more dependencies.
To install from Source (stable), run the following:
curl -0 http://pypi.python.org/packages/source/X/Xnt/Xnt-0.6.3.tar.gz > Xnt.tar.gz tar -xzvf Xnt.tar.gz cd Xnt-0.6.3 python[2] setup.py install [--user]
To build and install from a development build(non-stable/ testing), run:
git clone git://github.com/devnulltao/Xnt.git
cd Xnt
python[2] setup.py install [--user]
Or if you prefer, you can download a zip of the latest build and install; run:
curl -0 https://github.org/devnulltao/Xnt/archive/master.zip > Xnt.zip
unzip Xnt.zip
cd Xnt
python[2] setup.py install [--user]
If you install using the --user option in either source or PyPi installs, you may need to add ~/.local/bin/ to your PATH environment variable.
If on windows, after installing you will need to edit your PATH environment variable to include the installation location (either <python_install_dir>\Scripts or $HOME\AppData\Roaming\Python\Scripts).