spice-build

name	spice-build
description	Build the Spice compiler (`spice`) and/or the test runner (`spicetest`) with CMake/Ninja. Use when the user wants to compile/rebuild the project, build a specific target, produce a release/debug build, or set up the CMake build directory before running or testing.

Build Spice

The Spice repo is a CMake project (top-level CMakeLists.txt) that produces two main artifacts:

• spice — the compiler CLI (src/, output at <build-dir>/src/spice)
• spicetest — the GoogleTest runner (test/, output at <build-dir>/test/spicetest)

Build directory convention

Reuse one of these directories so artifacts stay organized (per AGENTS.md):

• cmake-build-debug/ — day-to-day development and testing
• cmake-build-release/ — optimized builds for benchmarking

The python build.py helper instead builds into build/ with Release + Ninja and moves the binaries to the repo root; prefer the directories above for agent work unless the user explicitly wants build.py.

Prerequisites

A configured LLVM build must be reachable. find_package(LLVM) locates it via LLVM_DIR (the local dev setup builds LLVM into ./llvm/build-release):

export LLVM_DIR=$PWD/llvm/build-release/lib/cmake/llvm

If LLVM and third-party libs are missing, run python dev-setup.py once (slow: it clones and builds LLVM). python setup-deps.py alone fetches just the header-only deps (json, CLI11) into lib/.

Configure (first time / after CMakeLists changes)

cmake -S . -B cmake-build-debug -G Ninja -DCMAKE_BUILD_TYPE=Debug
# release:
cmake -S . -B cmake-build-release -G Ninja -DCMAKE_BUILD_TYPE=Release

Build targets

Run from inside the build dir, or pass --build <dir>:

# Everything (compiler + tests)
cmake --build cmake-build-debug

# Just the compiler
cmake --build cmake-build-debug --target spice

# Just the test runner
cmake --build cmake-build-debug --target spicetest

# Both, parallel
cmake --build cmake-build-debug --target spice spicetest -j

# Optional leak-check target (needs valgrind)
cmake --build cmake-build-debug --target spicetest_leakcheck

Tips

• Incremental rebuilds: just re-run cmake --build <dir> --target <t>; Ninja only recompiles what changed. No need to reconfigure unless CMake files change.
• After building, the compiler is at cmake-build-debug/src/spice — see the spice-dump skill for inspecting its IR/assembly output and spice-test for running the suite.
• Configure options live in Options.cmake / Conditionals.cmake / LLVMOptions.cmake if the user needs non-default flags.