waf definition ¶

English wikipedia definition ¶

Waf is a build automation tool designed to assist in the automatic compilation and installation of computer software.

It is written in Python and maintained by Thomas Nagy.

Waf’s source code is open source software, released under the terms of the New BSD License, though its accompanying documentation is under the CC-BY-NC-ND license, which forbids both modification and commercial redistribution: this prevents vendors such as the Debian project from including Waf documentation in their distributions.

History ¶

Thomas Nagy created a build automation tool called BKsys which was designed to sit on top of SCons, providing higher-level functionality similar to that of Autotools.

This was part of an effort for switching KDE away from Autotools to a more modern build system in the beginning stages of the KDE 4 development cycle.

BKsys/SCons was chosen by the KDE community as their new standard build system.

When Thomas Nagy decided that SCons’s fundamental issues (most notably the poor scalability) were too complex and time-consuming to fix, he started a complete rewrite which he named Waf. With BKsys being recognized as a dead end, KDE decided to switch to CMake instead; however, Waf continued to be maintained as an individual project and has since seen prolific development and adoption by other communities.

ABOUT WAF ¶

Waf is a Python-based framework for configuring, compiling and installing applications. Here are perhaps the most important features of Waf:

Automatic build order : the build order is computed from input and output files, among others
Automatic dependencies : tasks to execute are detected by hashing files and commands
Performance : tasks are executed in parallel automatically, the startup time is meant to be fast (separation between configuration and build)
Flexibility : new commands and tasks can be added very easily through subclassing, bottlenecks for specific builds can be eliminated through dynamic method replacement
Extensibility : though many programming languages and compilers are already supported by default, many others are available as extensions
IDE support : Eclipse, Visual Studio and Xcode project generators ( waflib/extras/ )
Documentation : the application is based on a robust model documented in The Waf Book and in the API docs
Python compatibility : cPython 2.5 to 3.x, Jython 2.5, IronPython, and Pypy

Waf is used in particular by innovative companies such as Avalanche Studios and by open-source projects such as RTEMS . Learn more about Waf by reading The Waf Book .

For researchers and build system writers, Waf also provides a framework for creating custom build systems and package distribution systems .

Download the project from our page on waf.io or from a mirror on freehackers.org , consult the manual , the API documentation and the showcases and experiments .

HOW TO CREATE THE WAF SCRIPT ¶

Python >= 2.6 is required to generate the waf script, and the resulting file can then run on Python 2.5. Just run:

            $ python ./waf-light configure build

           

Or, if several python versions are installed:

            $ python3 ./waf-light configure build

           

CUSTOMIZATION ¶

The Waf tools in waflib/extras are not added to the waf script. To add some of them, use the –tools switch. An absolute path can be passed if the module does not exist under the ‘extras’ folder:

            $ ./waf-light --tools=swig

           

To customize the initialization, pass the parameter ‘prelude’. Here is for example how to create a waf file using the compat15 module:

            $ ./waf-light --tools=compat15 --prelude=$'\tfrom waflib.extras import compat15\n'

           

Although any kind of initialization is possible, using the build system kit may be easier (folder build_system_kit):

            $ ./waf-light --make-waf --tools=compat15,/comp/waf/aba.py --prelude=$'\tfrom waflib.extras import compat15\n\tprint("ok")'

           

To avoid regenerating the waf file all the time, just set the WAFDIR environment variable to the directory containing “waflib”.

HOW TO RUN THE EXAMPLES ¶

Try this:

            cp waf demos/c/
cd demos/c/
./waf configure build

           