Uvod

JHBuild is a tool designed to ease building collections of source packages, called “modules”. JHBuild uses “module set” files to describe the modules available to build. The “module set” files include dependency information that allows JHBuild to discover what modules need to be built and in what order.

JHBuild je izvorno nastal za izgradnjo okolja GNOME, a je bil odsihmal razširjen na druge projekte. Datoteko “nabora modulov” lahko gostite na spletnem strežniku, kar omogoča, da so pravila izgradnje neodvisna od projekta JHBuild.

JHBuild can build modules from a variety of sources, including CVS, Subversion, Bazaar, Darcs, Git and Mercurial repositories, as well as Tar and Zip archives hosted on web or FTP sites. JHBuild can build modules using a variety of build systems, including Autotools, CMake, WAF, Python Distutils and Perl Makefiles.

JHBuild is not intended as a replacement for the distribution's package management system. Instead, it makes it easy to build software into a separate install prefix without interfering with the rest of the system.