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3 Gprbuild

GPRbuild is a generic build tool designed for the construction of large multi-language systems organized into subsystems and libraries. It is well-suited for compiled languages supporting separate compilation, such as Ada, C, C++ and Fortran.

GPRbuild manages a three step build process.

The tool is generic in that it provides, when possible, equivalent build capabilities for all supported languages. For this, it uses a configuration file <file>.cgpr that has a syntax and structure very similar to a project file, but which defines the characteristics of the supported languages and toolchains. The configuration file contains information such as:

On the other hand, GPRbuild is not a replacement for general-purpose build tools such as make or ant which give the user a high level of control over the build process itself. When building a system requires complex actions that do not fit well in the three-phase process described above, GPRbuild might not be sufficient. In such situations, GPRbuild can still be used to manage the appropriate part of the build. For instance it can be called from within a Makefile.