kBuild

kBuild is a build framework based on a modified GNU make and a standard set of cross platform tools. It is being developed by Knut St. Osmundsen as a netlabs.org project 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 fully understand it.

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