Jam Documentation

Updated

Product Information

Jam is a software build tool that makes building simple things simple and building complicated things manageable. It has been freely available as C source for many years from the Perforce Workshop and is widely used to build commercial and academic software. Jam is a very good solution for conventional C/C++ compile-and-link builds.

Because Jam understands C/C++ dependencies, there is no need to declare header or object files. The built-in Jam rule "Main" handles header file dependencies and object files both automatically and on-the-fly. Table 1 compares a Makefile and a Jamfile for building a simple program.

Jamfile

Makefile
Main proga : data.c main.c io.c ; proga: data.o main.o io.o
     cc data.o main.o io.o -o proga

data.o: data.c data.h
     cc -c data.c

main.o: data.h io.h main.c
     cc -c main.c

io.o: io.h io.c
     cc -c io.c
 

Table 1 - Jamfile vs Makefile for compiling a simple C program

Before any targets are updated, Jam gathers complete dependency information for C/C++ source files, allowing Jam to:

  • Build as much as possible, instead of halting on the first build error.
  • Avoid building targets if targets on which they depend fail to build.
  • Build across parallel paths with multiple, concurrent processes.

Additional Jam features

Unintrusive and clean Jam is small, it has negligible CPU overhead, and it doesn't create or leave behind temporary files.
Scalable Jam is able to build large projects spread across many directories in a single pass and can manage and distribute build steps to multiple processors on one or more networked machines.
Highly portable Jam runs on UNIX, VMS, NT, OS/2, Mac OS X, and Mac MPW. Most Jamfiles (like the sample above) are also portable.
Multiplatform Platform independent rules and platform specific actions can be defined separately from dependency rules.
Customizable Developers can enhance/extend Jam by creating user defined rules to utilize other built-in directives.
Language Jam includes flow-control statments, variables, and a few other features of general purpose languages.
Free Jam is free and can be incorporated into commercial products without licensing restrictions.

Getting the Source

The source for Jam is freely available from the Perforce Workshop.

White Papers and Examples

Jam has been around since 1993 and has a long history of use in many different settings. Here are some white papers and examples of Jam in use:

Documentation

  • Jam.html - Jam man page - a terse description of Jam and its language.
  • Jambase.html - Reference for the rule boilerplate file.
  • Jamfile.html - Easy reading on creating a Jamfile and using jam.
  • RELNOTES - Current release notes.
  • Porting - Notes on porting jam to wildcat platforms.
  • README - Installation instructions.
  • jam.c - Contains jam's main() as well as an introduction to the code, for serious hackers.

Support

While Jam comes with no warranties or guarantees and is not supported by Perforce, assistance on Jam is available from the Jamming mailing list which provides a forum to submit your own questions or to review posts from other Jam users. Helpful tips and past discussion can be found in the Jamming archive.

Consulting services specific to Jam and build related issues are available from VIZIM Worldwide, a Perforce Consulting Partner.

Release History

  • November, 1993 - release 1.0
  • March, 1995 - release 2.0
  • February, 1996 - release 2.1
  • November, 1997 - release 2.2
  • December, 2000 - release 2.3
  • March, 2002 - release 2.4
  • April, 2003 - release 2.5
  • August, 2014 - release 2.6

Other Resources

FreeType.org's modified version of Jam, FT Jam, is 100% backwards compatible with classic Jam and can be used as a plug-in replacement for it.

Plugins & Integrations
Contribute
Developer