Show HN: Seastar – Build and dependency manager for C/C++ with Cargo's features

Seastar is a fast, extensible build system for C, C++, and maybe soon, Rust and Zig as well. I believe that it should be easy to make, prototype, and iterate upon designs. While C is still one of our most widely used languages, it makes it hard to create programs easily, especially for beginners. Instead, Seastar aims to be more like Rust's tooling with cargo, but supporting seamless compilation across more languages.

Seastar is very simple to build and run. Assuming you have Cargo and Rust installed, clone the repository, cd into the example folder, and run cargo run -- build to run Seastar and build the example project, or cargo run -- run to run the example project. Check example/Seastar.toml to make sure that you have the compiler installed and correctly set in that file.

Seastar is still in a very early state, and thus I wouldn't recommend using it currently for anything serious. Below, however, you can see my roadmap, and if you want to get updates, you can watch this repository.

• Sort of working: Being able to compile and link a simple project with multiple files and include headers.
• Incremental builds: The entire program shouldn't be recompiled every time a single file is changed.
• Custom compiler flags: The programmer should be able to customize the compiler flags through Seastar.toml without needing to change the build/run commands.
• Parallel builds: Compiling in parallel is faster and more efficient.
• C++ support: Seastar should be able to compile and link C++ without changing options or difficult configuration.
• Rust support: Seastar should be able to compile and link Rust without changing options or difficult configuration.
• Easy template generation: We should be able to create templates with a single command, e.g. seastar init --lang c
• Unified package manager: a difficult goal, but it should be easy to install packages for C, C++, and Rust neatly and natively to Seastar.

If you find this project cool and want to see more , please consider leaving a star! It supports the development of this project and is really helpful.