Install build2 with Homebrew

Project links

• Homepage

Commands and aliases

• b
• bdep
• bpkg
• bx

Project history

The build2 project started in the mid-2010s with documentation copyright dating from 2014 and public toolchain tags beginning at 0.1.0. Its stated goal is to approximate Rust Cargo's convenience for C and C++ while keeping enough depth for complex real-world build requirements.

The toolchain is intentionally hierarchical: `b` is the general-purpose build system, `bpkg` handles package consumption, and `bdep` handles project development. The `build2-toolchain` repository is an amalgamation used to build and package those components together.

Adoption history

build2 has remained a specialist C/C++ toolchain rather than a default ecosystem standard like CMake, but its own community page says it is used for real development and cites customer-facing software such as ODB and XSD. The project also maintains cppget.org as its package repository.

It is packaged by Homebrew, Nix, Fedora-style `bdep` packages, and Windows winget according to the input. Upstream development happens in self-hosted git repositories on git.build2.org with GitHub mirrors for collaboration.

How it is used

Users typically create or initialize projects with `bdep`, build with `b`, and consume dependencies with `bpkg`. The documented configuration surface includes project-local `build/config.build`, `.build2/` state, `.build2/local/`, user-level `~/.build2/`, and system-level `/etc/build2/` locations.

The toolchain is aimed primarily at C/C++ and mixed-language projects involving C or C++, though the project describes a longer-term universal build-toolchain goal.

Why package nerds care

build2 is significant because it is one of the more complete attempts to give C and C++ a Cargo-like combined build, package, and project-management workflow without hiding the complexity needed by native-code builds.

For package managers, it is also recursive in an interesting way: the build2 toolchain is used for its own development, and the upstream amalgamation repository exists specifically to make source builds and binary packaging of the whole toolchain practical.

Timeline

• 2014: build2 documentation copyright begins, marking the early public project era.
• 2010s: Public 0.x toolchain tags began with 0.1.0 and evolved through the pre-1.0 series.
• 2018: The project pointed users to a CppCon 2018 presentation as a toolchain overview.
• 2020s: The community page described build2 as in the final stage of pre-1.0 development and already used in projects such as ODB and XSD.
• 2026: The Toolchain Introduction metadata showed version 0.18 and copyright through 2026.

Related projects

• Cargo is the explicit convenience benchmark named by the build2 homepage.
• CMake and Autotools are common neighboring C/C++ build-system incumbents, though build2 packages build, dependency, and project management together.
• cppget.org is the build2 package repository referenced by the project community page.

Sources

• https://build2.org
• https://build2.org/build2-toolchain/doc/build2-toolchain-intro.xhtml
• https://build2.org/community.xhtml
• https://git.build2.org/cgit/build2-toolchain/plain/README.md
• source_facts.package-manager