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Perforce Jam is a build system developed by Perforce Software. It can be used as a replacement for make. Its primary feature is its ability to allow developers to write portable "Jamfiles". Jam can be used with autoconf, although it is often not necessary because of Jam's portability features. Perforce Jam runs on Unix (including many clones), OpenVMS, Windows NT (including Windows 2000 and Windows XP), and Mac OS. It can possibly be configured to work on Windows 9x using MinGW or Cygwin.
FT Jam is a popular variant and fully backward compatible, although its features are being integrated into Perforce Jam. Users of FT Jam often refer to Perforce Jam as "Classic Jam".
Jambase
Jam comes with a set of rules called "Jambase", which define rules for building various things. Jambase is "smart" and knows, for instance, that if a header file is modified, all files that include it must be rebuilt. Unlike with makefiles, the writer of the Jamfile need not manage these dependencies, only list the source code files themselves. Jambase is usually compiled into the executable file itself.
Jambase is notorious among Jam users for its bugs and the infrequency with which fixes are integrated into the distribution, though few bugs are critical. There are some packages such as AutoJam (http://developer.berlios.de/projects/autojam) designed to solve some of the problems of Jambase.
See also
- Boost - includes a package called Boost.Build, which uses a special version of Jam called Boost.Jam
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