A full circle moment

konni332 — Sun, 29 Jun 2025 00:39:57 +0000

Just had one of those moments, that showed me, why I started programming in the first place.

A few months ago I wrote a CLI tool in C, to benchmark binaries and python scripts measuring mean, median, stddev, …, for Real-time, CPU-times and max RSS.

Then I spent a few weeks writing a build tool for C programs, using Rust, supporting gcc and clang.

Now, for the first time, I used my build tool, to build the benchmarking tool and then used the benchmarking tool, to measure my build tools performance.

It felt weirdly powerful, like I had started to build my own little ecosystem.
That „I built all of this myself“ Moment was just pure joy. That kind of thing, that makes all the late nights worth it!

I’m curious, has anyone else had similar moments, where your tools started building or testing each other? Would love to hear them!

Rusty Forge

konni332 — Sun, 15 Jun 2025 22:10:39 +0000

As a student-developer primarily working in C, I was genuinely delighted when I started learning Rust and discovered Cargo. Coming from a background of Makefiles and CMakeLists, Cargo felt refreshingly simple and intuitive.
My very first thought was:
“Why don’t we have this for C?”
I built RustyForge - a minimal, fast, and cross-platform build system for C projects. It brings modern features, like TOML-based configuration, so you can get started with zero boilerplate, using rustyforge init and rustyforge discover.

Why RustyForge?

Most C projects use Make, CMake or other build systems that lack flexibility and ease of use.
RustyForge on the other hand uses:

Easy TOML-Configuration
Hash-based caching, for fast builds
Parallel compilation for full CPU utilization
Cross platform support - Windows and linux (macOS support is planned)
Modern toolchain support, with gcc and clang (MSCV support planned)

Core-Features

Parsing the RustyForge.toml for configurations
Checking hashes for .c files and header dependencies
Compiling .c files to .o files, with correct include paths
Parallel compilation for optimal performance
Linking object files to binaries and libraries (shared and static)
Linking shared and static libraries into your binary
Compiler configuration (gcc/clang)

How to use RustyForge

cargo install rustyforge
rustyforge init
rustyforge discover
rustyforge run

Discover

The discover subcommand, scans the current working directory for .c files and include directories. It then prompts you to add them to your RustyForge.toml configuration.

You can customize its behaviour with the following flags:

--auto: Automatically add all discovered files without prompting
--ignore: Exclude files or directories based on glob patterns

This makes setting up a project with existing files effortless - no need to manually list every source or include path.

Other example commands

rustyforge build --verbose
rustyforge rebuild --compiler=clang
rustyforge clean

Use rustyforge --help or -h for a more in depth usage.

What's next

I'm planning more features like:

Test-targets and automatic test execution
Cross-compilation
MSVC-support for Windows
A CLion plugin for IDE integration

Give it a try!

If you work with C and are tired of managing Make files, give RustyForge a try!
RustyForge is Open Source and available on crates.io. Have a look at the source code on: github rustyforge

I'd love your feedback, contributions, ideas, or bug reports!

Thanks for taking a look!

DEV Community: konni332