kBuild

kBuild is a build framework based on GNU make. It has been created by Knut St. Osmundsen is is licensed under the GPL. VirtualBox is a cross platform project and therefore we needed a powerful build system that works on several platforms.

kBuild is extremely powerful and tries to hide most of its complexity in templates so that the actual makefiles are relatively easy to understand and write. The core of kBuild is very complex though and there are currently 0.5 people on the planet that full understand it.

Even though kBuild is based on GNU make, it comes with a custom make command. The reason is that it is based on the very latest GNU make not found on most installations and in addition, it contains some enhancements to GNU make, mainly to greatly speed up the build process.

kBuild is also used outside VirtualBox and maintained as a hobby by Knut St. Osmundsen. His private kBuild web page can be found at ​http://svn.netlabs.org/kbuild.