The Nox Build System

Nox is a cross-platform build system and task runner written in Rust. Its core models projects, targets, dependencies, toolchains, Riders, and structured build actions independently of any one language.

See the complete documentation for project integration, command behavior, the nox.build language, architecture, and troubleshooting.

Build Nox

Note

Build Nox. It is a build system. The name does most of the work here.

cargo build --release

Use Nox

A project declares its build graph in nox.build:

project "example" {
    version = "1.0.0"

    executable "example" {
        sources = glob("src/*.c")
        include_dirs = ["include"]
        defines = ["FEATURE=1"]
        flags = ["-Wall", "-Wextra"]
    }
}

Configure once, then build incrementally:

nox setup build
nox build build -j8

Install the configured project into /usr/local, placing executables in /usr/local/bin:

nox install

Use --prefix for a different installation root. nox install configures and builds automatically when the build directory does not exist:

nox install --prefix "$HOME/.local"

To install Nox itself from a source checkout, bootstrap the executable once with Cargo, then let Nox handle the rest:

cargo run -- install
/usr/local/bin/nox

The default configuration is debug; pass --release during setup for release artifacts. Commands include setup, configure, build, clean, rebuild, install, uninstall, validate, status/stat, test, run, graph, targets, list, version, and task NAME. Every command supports --help.

noxfile is optional and contains task automation. It is separate from nox.build, which describes the actual compilation graph.

Supported Backends

C and C++ sources use the detected GCC or Clang-compatible compiler with compiler-generated dependency files. Static libraries, shared libraries, executables, includes, definitions, compiler flags, linker flags, debug/release settings, and parallel compilation are supported. Basic Rust executables and libraries use rustc directly.

Nix

The flake provides the package, development shell, formatter, and flake checks:

nix develop
nix fmt
nix flake check

Other flakes can consume the repository package:

inputs.nox.url = "github:playfairs/nox";

packages = [ inputs.nox.packages.${system}.default ];

The same package is available as inputs.nox.packages.${system}.nox, and the executable can be run with:

nix run github:playfairs/nox

See nox-vscode for LSP support for Visual Studio Code.