What is Premake

Premake is…

Why Premake

• Single lua script
• Portable binary with built-in lua

Example premake5.lua

Let’s say you have an SDL2 project that uses OpenGL and you want the following directory structure:

• Project/
  • src/
  • build/

src is where the project source code lies, and build is where you want the project files to end up. After compilation, you want the binary to be placed in the project root.

To create a script compatible with generating project files for Linux, Windows, and Mac OS X, you would use a script similar to the following:

solution "Project"
  configurations { "Debug", "Release" }
  location ("build/" .. _ACTION)

project "Project"
  kind "WindowedApp"
  language "C++"
  targetdir "./"
  location ("build" .. _ACTION)

  files { "src/**.hpp", "src/**.cpp" }

  configuration { "linux" }
    buildoptions { "-I/usr/include/SDL2/" }
    links { "SDL2", "GLEW", "GL", "pthread" }
  configuration "windows"
    links { "glew32", "opengl32", "SDL2", "SDL2main", "ws2_32" }
  configuration "macosx"
    syslibdirs { "/Library/Frameworks/" }
    libdirs { "/Library/Frameworks/" }
    links { "SDL2.framework", "OpenGL.framework" }
    includedirs { "/Library/Frameworks/SDL2.framework/Headers/" }
    sysincludedirs { "/Library/Frameworks/SDL2.framework/Headers/" }

The Linux Build

On Linux, you have multiple options, but here we assume GNU make is our target project file:

premake5 gmake

Afterwards, you can simply enter the build/gmake directory and run make:

cd build/gmake && make && cd ../..

Now you can execute your program:

./Project

The Windows Build

On Windows you also have multiple possible IDE project files, but here we assume Visual Studio 2013:

premake5 vs2013

Now you can open your project file generated in build/vs2013/ and build/run it.

From The Command-line: vsbuild

However, if you’re like me, you might prefer being able to use the terminal to build and run your project as well.

My solution was to create two scripts to be executed: a shell script that executes a batch file.

The wrapper shell script is simple enough:

#!/bin/bash
cmd /c C:/Users/kts/.local/bin/vsbuild.bat "$@"

The batch is also fairly simple, but you may have to adjust it if you’re not using Visual Studio 2013:

call "C:\Program Files (x86)\Microsoft Visual Studio 12.0\VC\vcvarsall.bat" x86
msbuild %*

Now instead of opening the project file with VS, you can simply navigate to the build/vs2013 directory and run vsbuild: cd build/vs2013 && vsbuild && cd …/…

You can then execute your program: ./Project.exe

Note: There are some issues with how stdout is handled from within mintty/cygwin – output was only flushed when the program finished.

• Compile: vsbuild
• Clean: vsbuild /t:clean

The Mac Build

Mac OS X also has multiple options, but here we are using XCode4 due to an older laptop:

premake5 xcode4

You can then open your project file with XCode and do the normal build/run.

Or use the command-line: cd build/xcode4 && xcodebuild && cd …/…

You can then run your program:

./Project

Note: There are some obvious problems with not creating an application bundle, so you likely want to clear the targetdir project directive.

• Compile: xcodebuild
• Clean: xcodebuild clean