C/C++ Build System - Simple Configuration

So, I'm writing up what I think would be a decent start for a configuration file for my new build system. It's very inspired by Maven, so the configuration is very similar. I make no excuses for that.

This is an example configuration file that describes a simple project that builds an executable application, and depends on

• Boost Filesystem 1.49+
• Boost ASIO 1.49+
• NCurses 5+

	<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?>
	<builder xmlns:xsi="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema-instance"
	xmlns="http://grahamcox.co.uk/builder/builder-1.0.0">
	<groupId>uk.co.grahamcox.builder.test</groupId>
	<artifactId>simple</artifactId>
	<version>1.0.0-SNAPSHOT</version>
	<type>executable</type>
	<name>Simple Test Project</name>
	<dependencies>
	<dependency>
	<groupId>org.boost</groupId>
	<artifactId>boost-filesystem</artifactId>
	<version>1.49</version>
	</dependency>
	<dependency>
	<groupId>org.boost</groupId>
	<artifactId>boost-asio</artifactId>
	<version>1.49</version>
	</dependency>
	<dependency>
	<groupId>ncurses</groupId>
	<artifactId>ncurses</artifactId>
	<version>5</version>
	</dependency>
	</dependencies>
	</builder>

view raw builder.xml hosted with ❤ by GitHub

Ideally it will be able to tell that Boost 1.53 - which is the current version - is greater than 1.49 and so will be acceptable, and ideally it will be able to be configured to know that a certain version is too high and isn't suitable.

Because of the difference in how C/C++ projects work to how Java ones work, it will be the case that the dependency definitions are available but the dependencies themselves need to be installed on the system already.

I'm also thinking - because it works well for Maven, and makes sense to me - to have dependency definitions be accessed over the internet from a central repository. That way, you don't need to ensure that you have them on your system in the correct directory for them to work...