Waf is a Python-based framework for configuring, compiling and installing applications. It derives from the concepts of other build tools such as Scons, Autotools, CMake or Ant.

Features

• Easy to use: Waf configuration files are written in the mainstream scripting language Python
• Easy to install and to distribute: Waf fits entirely in a single 75KB redistributable file which does not require any installation to run
• Portable: Waf only depends on Python which is ported onto most operating systems
• Reliable: Waf uses hash-based dependency calculation dependencies to compute the targets to rebuild
• User-friendly: The output can be displayed in colors, filtered, displayed with progress bars or output all the commands that get executed
• Documented: The Waf book sums up the essential concepts
• Flexible: Because Waf has a carefully designed object oriented architecture it is very easy to add new features
• Fast: Because of its carefully designed architecture, Waf is able to distribute the jobs on multi-core hardware (-j), it is able to reuse targets compiled already (ccache), and its runtime footprint is pretty small compared to other build tools
• Broad support for languages and tools: Waf is already used for C, C++, C#, D, java, ocaml, python project, and provides various tools for processing docbook, man pages, intltool, msgfmt

Documentation

The documentation can be found at the following places

• The Waf book
• Wiki
• Example projects which show how to use Waf for different languages and projects

Contact

Google Groups / Mailing list

The mailing list is located at waf-users

IRC

Join us to the #waf channel on irc.freenode.org

Contributing

Contributions may be provided in several different ways by:

• Filling feature requests on the Issue Tracker
• Contributing documentation on the Wiki
• Using Waf to build your own software
• Improving Waf itself by changing its Source code
• Browsing the most recent changes

Screenshots

Waf console output

The progress bar when the -p option is used