Alternatives to mkmfEdit

In this article I describe a couple of the alternatives to mkmf that I learnt about while exploring some questions about mkmf. The questions were:

• "Doing rake-like stuff with mkmf?": http://groups.google.com/group/comp.lang.ruby/browse_thread/thread/6c11ef6b608e03d8/
• "Forcing mkmf to use static libraries instead of dynamic ones": http://groups.google.com/group/comp.lang.ruby/browse_thread/thread/7342fead8ff64c59/

mkrf

mkrf is a replacement for mkmf written by Kevin Clark. It was a Google Summer of Code project in 2006. It creates Rakefiles instead of Makefiles.

• RubyForge project page: http://rubyforge.org/projects/mkrf/
• Podcast demonstrating mkrf basics: http://podcast.sdruby.com/podcasts/003_mkmf.m4v
• http://www.oreillynet.com/ruby/blog/2006/06/mkmf_mkrf.html

The author has stated that he'd like to see mkrf absorbed into Rake itself. At the time of writing, the latest release of mkrf is version 0.2.1 (released 14 April 2007).

mkmf2

mkmf2 also aims to replace mkmf but still creates Makefiles (not Rakefiles).

• Official project page: http://mkmf2.rubyforge.org/
• RDoc documentation: http://mkmf2.rubyforge.org/doc/
• RubyForge project page: http://rubyforge.org/projects/mkmf2/