A-A-P is a make like program made by Bram Moolenaar, the guy
who made Vim. IMO, A-A-P is easier to use than make and it is
possible to do more complicated tasks by embedding python.

(www.a-a-p.org)

A-A-P is quite feature rich, but the parts that might make
it interesting for D users are the :dll, :lib and :program
targets.

By doing for example

<--------------------

:import d

:dll foodll : foo.d bar.d

<--------------------

in an A-A-P recipe, an call to aap will build a dll from
those two source files automatically as long as dmd and link.exe
is installed and in the path. Dependency checking is included.

Doing

<---------------

:dll {onestep} foodll : foo.d bar.d

<---------------

instead will pass all source files to dmd at once instead of
compiling one and one file using the -c switch.

Dependency checking can be turned off like this (in smaller
projects it will probably slow down the process):

<----------------

AUTODEPEND = off

<----------------

The A-A-P manual include some D specific information, and D
is used as an example of how to add support for another language.
Adding support for other compilers (when they arrive is relatively
easy).

I have had few chances to test this stuff on Linux, so I don't know
how well it works there. I've made no real effort to do it blindly.

On Windows, I've built DUI and the helloworld example (including
the import libs) through one main recipe and a few child recipes.
Thus I can go to my DUI directory, type 'aap', and DUI and HW is
built.

Fixes and new features can be requested from me, but I give no
guarantees that I'll have the time for it. Bram accept patches
quite quickly if you want to do it yourself.

Preferebly ask questions on the a-a-p-user mailinglist, or
alternatively use this thread.

If anyone want the DUI files (They are not totally complete
or perfect, but should work well as an example), mail me.

Lars Ivar Igesund