Welcome to the Premake Quick Start! This guide will help you create a custom set of build scripts for your project and get you on your way.

A real quick introduction: Premake is a build script generator. It reads a file that describes a software project and uses it to generate the project files for Visual Studio 6 to 2005, GNU make, Code::Blocks, SharpDevelop, or MonoDevelop. By using Premake, your project manager saves time and supports more users.

Getting Premake

If you don’t have Premake already, download it now.

Premake is a small (around 150K) command-line executable. Unpack it and put it on your system search path or anywhere convenient.

Using Premake

The simplest Premake command is

$ premake --target toolset

Where toolset is one of:

You can see a complete list of options by typing

$ premake --help

In addition to the built-in options, your software project may also have one or more custom options; these will be displayed at the end of the list. You can specify options by listing them before the target, like this:

$ premake --dotnet mono2 --target gnu

If at some point you decide that you would like to remove all of the project files and intermediate objects and start again, you can use this command:

$ premake --clean

Next Steps

If you are having trouble building your project, your best bet is to first contact the project manager. If you are having trouble building or using Premake, have a look at the Support page.

To learn how to add Premake support to your own projects see the next page, Writing Premake Scripts.