Minimal Hello World for FASTBuild

FASTBuild is an open source build program with amazing potential. It apparently allows distributed compilation out-of-the-box, which is something Incredibuild charge a lot of money for. But the documentation is minimal so far, and it lacks a functional example. So I put together a "Hello World" for FASTBuild. The HelloWorld.cpp is:

#include <iostream>

int main(int , char * [])
{
 std::cout << "hello world!\n";
 return 0;
}

And the project config file is build.bff:

;-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
; Windows Platform
;-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
.VSBasePath  = 'C:/Program Files (x86)/Microsoft Visual Studio 12.0'
.WindowsSDKBasePath = 'C:/Program Files (x86)/Windows Kits/8.1'
.ClangBasePath  = 'C:/Program Files/LLVM'
.WindowsLibPaths = '$WindowsSDKBasePath$/lib/winv6.3/um'


.BaseIncludePaths  = ' /I"./"'
    + ' /I"$VSBasePath$/VC/include/"'
    + ' /I"$WindowsSDKBasePath$/include/um"'
    + ' /I"$WindowsSDKBasePath$/include/shared"'

Compiler( 'Compiler-x86' )
{
 .Root  = '$VSBasePath$/VC/bin'
 .Executable = '$Root$/cl.exe'
}
; MSVC Toolchain
;---------------
.ToolsBasePath  = '$VSBasePath$/VC/bin'
.Compiler  = 'Compiler-x86'
.Librarian  = '$ToolsBasePath$/lib.exe'
.Linker   = '$ToolsBasePath$/link.exe'
.CompilerOptions = '%1 /Fo%2 /c /Z7'
.CompilerOptions + .BaseIncludePaths
.LibrarianOptions = '/NODEFAULTLIB /OUT:%2 %1'
.LinkerOptions  = ' /OUT:%2 %1 /SUBSYSTEM:CONSOLE'
.LinkerOptions  +  ' /LIBPATH:"$WindowsLibPaths$/x86" /LIBPATH:"$VSBasePath$/VC/lib"'

; Libraries
;----------
Library( 'exelib' )
{
    .CompilerInputPath = '.\\'
    .CompilerOutputPath= 'Out\'
    .LibrarianOutput   = 'Out\exelib.lib'
}

; Executables
;------------
Executable( 'myExe' )
{
 .CompilerInputPath = '.\'
 .CompilerInputPattern    ='*.cpp'
 .CompilerOutputPath= 'Out/'
 .Libraries    = { 'exelib' }
 .LinkerOutput = 'HelloWorld.exe'
 .LinkerOptions + ' /SUBSYSTEM:CONSOLE'
   + ' LIBCMT.LIB'
}

; 'all'
;-------
Alias( 'all' )
{
   .Targets = { 'myExe' }
}

To build it, go to the directory in a command prompt and run FBuild.exe.
This is for Visual Studio 2013 (12.0) - for different versions just change the VSBasePath variable.

One really interesting thing is that you can't seem to compile source files into Executables directly: you have to specify a library (e.g. "exelib" above), and use .CompilerInputPath to specify a directory. It will scan the path for all files of interest (.cpp by default) - you can specify them individually if you want. But the Executable command doesn't compile cpp's and if you don't include a library, it will complain of having no Object files to link.

Update 27/1/2016

FASTBuild author Franta Fulin has posted an official Hello World example: you can find it here.