Note: unless you specifically only need the build2 build system and not the complete build2 toolchain, you should use the build2-toolchain distribution instead. build2 requires a C++11 compiler with limited C++14 support. GCC 4.8 or later and Clang 3.4 or later are known to work. build2 is self-hosted, which means that unless you have obtained a pre-built binary from somewhere else, you will need to bootstrap it. To accomplish this, use the 'bootstrap' shell script found in the root directory of the build2 distribution. The following is the recommended sequence of steps: 1. Prerequisites Get libbutl and place it next to build2, so that you have: libbutl/ (or libbutl-X.Y.Z/) build2/ (or build2-X.Y.Z/) 2. Bootstrapping Change to the build2/ directory and execute bootstrap specifying the C++ compiler to be used, if necessary (default is g++; run ./bootstrap --help for other options). For example: $ cd build2/ $ ./bootstrap --cxx clang++-3.5 Once the script completes successfully (which may take some time), the build2 binary is saved as build2/b-boot: $ build2/b-boot --version 3. Rebuilding Next, build libbutl and the build2 binary using the bootstrapped binary from step 2: $ build2/b-boot 'configure(../libbutl/)' $ build2/b-boot config.import.libbutl=../libbutl configure update Again, if necessary, you can also specify the C++ compiler: $ build2/b-boot config.cxx=clang++-3.5 ... The resulting build2 binary is saved as build2/b: $ build2/b --version 4. Verification This step is optional and involves re-building libbutl and build2 yet again using the binary built on step 3 and verifying that the two builds are identical. @@ This is currently broken since the resulting binary contains full object file paths. So we would need to build in exactly the same place as the original, but that would make the binary from step 2 unusable. It seems the only way to make it work is via installation/staging. To perform this step, first unpack new copies of libbutl and build2 into a different directory, for example, a verify/ sub-directory. Then complete step 2 for these new copies but using build2/b binary from step 3 rather than build2/b-boot from step 2. Also, use the libbutl from step 2 in the config.import.libbutl value (otherwise rpath differences will result in different build2 binaries). For example: $ cd verify/build2 $ ../../build2/build2/b '{configure update}(../libbutl-X.Y.Z/)' $ ../../build2/build2/b config.import.libbutl=../../libbutl-X.Y.Z \ configure update Once this is done, compare the libbutl libraries and build2 binaries, for example: $ cd ../.. $ diff libbutl/butl/libbutl.so verify/libbutl/butl/libbutl.so $ diff build2/build2/b verify/build2/build2/b 5. Installation $ build2/b config.install.root=/usr/local config.install.root.sudo=sudo \ 'install(../libbutl-X.Y.Z/ ./)' Note: you may want to use the config.bin.rpath configuration variable on step 3 if your installation location is not searched automatically for shared libraries. See the INSTALL file in build2-toolchain for details.