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Top 23 Build Tool Open-Source Projects
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CodeRabbit
CodeRabbit: AI Code Reviews for Developers. Revolutionize your code reviews with AI. CodeRabbit offers PR summaries, code walkthroughs, 1-click suggestions, and AST-based analysis. Boost productivity and code quality across all major languages with each PR.
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I began searching for a new test framework, and at the recommendation of Nuck, I gave Vitest a shot. It's by the developers of Vite, which I loved. I don't do a lot of frontend development, but when I do, Vite is often my choice. Unlike many other solutions to frontend builds I've tried in the past, Vite "just works" and involves minimal baggage (looking at you, Angular).
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From its documentation [1] it looks a lot like a parceljs replacement [2], i.e. a zero config bundler which processes and bundles the dependencies in .html pages. So great for simple websites, not for replacing an entire Vite stack.
[1] https://bun.sh/docs/bundler/fullstack
[2] https://parceljs.org
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Gulp
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This name has a funny background. Many years ago, I was in an IRC conversation with a developer who began describing a build tool he was making. I was a jerk and scoffed at the API, and began sketching out my own build tool. I named it grabthar after my favorite joke from Galaxy Quest. It didn't go anywhere, but I kept the source around. When it came time to write a tool for Matanuska, I decided to reuse the name. But anyway, it turns out I was talking to the author of Grunt, and boy did I look silly.
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> Ninja is pretty easy to implement for the fun 20% of it and the remaining 80% is "just" some fiddly details.
There are many ninja generators out there already [1] but writing a simple, custom one shouldn't be too hard [2] and could make sense for some projects.
BTW, ninja is great but I wish the configuration file had used a more standard format, easier to parse and generate from any language. JSON would have been a better option I think, given the abundance of tooling around it.
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1: https://github.com/ninja-build/ninja/wiki/List-of-generators...
2: https://ninja-build.org/manual.html#ref_ninja_file
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InversifyJS
A powerful and lightweight inversion of control container for JavaScript & Node.js apps powered by TypeScript.
Project mention: InversifyJS VS vorarbeiter - a user suggested alternative | libhunt.com/r/InversifyJS | 2025-02-02 -
SaaSHub
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PlatformIO
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With cargo-c I try to use the best practices to support as many platform as possible, trying to stay in sync with what meson does. Sadly what is conceptually trivial, installing a package, has lots of details that are platform-specific.
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spack
A flexible package manager that supports multiple versions, configurations, platforms, and compilers.
Just out of curiosity, have you checked out Spack, https://github.com/spack/spack, which has a lot of HPC users. Support for mixing and matching both system and from source dependencies has been extremely useful in my work.
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Project mention: Go 1.24's go tool is one of the best additions to the ecosystem in years | news.ycombinator.com | 2025-01-27
https://somesocks.github.io/dryad/
One other alternative I know of that's multi-language is Pants(https://www.pantsbuild.org/), which has support for packages in several languages, and an "ad-hoc" mode which lets you build packages with a custom tool if it isn't officially supported. They've added support for quite a few new tools/languages lately, and seem to be very much an active project.
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setup-php
GitHub action to set up PHP with extensions, php.ini configuration, coverage drivers, and various tools.
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Has anyone tried SCONS? Came across someone using it in a place where I worked earlier.
Python-based make-like tool.
https://scons.org/
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In recent years there has been some improvement with the available tooling with the likes of rebar3[1] and just a few months ago WhatsApp released ELP (Erlang Language Platform)[2] which integrates with your IDE as a language server that provides really nice support when working with Erlang.
[1]: https://www.rebar3.org/
[2]: https://whatsapp.github.io/erlang-language-platform/
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FlubuCore
A cross platform build and deployment automation system for building projects and executing deployment scripts using C# code.
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bloop
Bloop is a build server and CLI tool to compile, test and run Scala fast from any editor or build tool. (by scalacenter)
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Build Tools discussion
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InversifyJS VS vorarbeiter - a user suggested alternative
2 projects | 2 Feb 2025 -
InversifyJS VS vorarbeiter - a user suggested alternative
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A note from our sponsor - SaaSHub
www.saashub.com | 11 Feb 2025
Index
What are some of the best open-source Build Tool projects? This list will help you:
# | Project | Stars |
---|---|---|
1 | create-react-app | 103,091 |
2 | vite | 70,498 |
3 | parcel | 43,626 |
4 | gulp | 33,053 |
5 | grunt | 12,262 |
6 | ninja | 11,534 |
7 | InversifyJS | 11,511 |
8 | PlatformIO | 8,107 |
9 | web-skills | 7,074 |
10 | meson | 5,820 |
11 | spack | 4,540 |
12 | Invoke | 4,465 |
13 | pants | 3,406 |
14 | Broccoli | 3,327 |
15 | setup-php | 2,982 |
16 | scons | 2,151 |
17 | PyBuilder | 1,763 |
18 | Rebar3 | 1,716 |
19 | Nox | 1,359 |
20 | Phing | 1,160 |
21 | FlubuCore | 912 |
22 | bloop | 911 |
23 | RocketX | 866 |