Language freedom is slightly more complicated than compiler freedom. As will be discussed more fully in the following section, Doozer++ separates its work into two pieces: configuration and compilation. During configuration, the tools for compilation are chosen; during compilation, the chosen tools are put to use.

The primary project building tool is GNU make. We chose GNU make initially because of its portability and because it offered useful features over most basic make(1) implementations. Other implementations, such as BSD make, offer even more features, but they are not as portable as GNU make.

Because Doozer++ uses GNU make, users must write makefiles. Doozer++ provides a number of modular makefile “stubs” that collect common functionality. In particular, these stubs provide support for compiling code written in Java, C, C++, and IDL. Adding support for other languages can be done within Doozer++ or within user-level makefiles.