Unless you’re a programmer, whether you’re a software developer for Apple systems or some other platform, you may have never heard of the build system before. But you have that time, because it can be big.. .
A build system is essentially a set of programs that work in unison to turn raw code from a programming language into a working output program. Pretty much every major programming language has it, and if you’re a jailbreak tweak developer, then you’ve probably used a language called Theos before.
Having said all that, one developer named ja1dan shared a post this weekend in /r/jailbreak about a brand new Luz build system specifically for jailbreak tweak developers, and as you might expect it could get better. Jailbreak significantly improves development workflows.
On the Luz documentation page, we learn that Luz was written in pure Python and that it was designed for Apple Darwin based systems with speed in mind. In fact, the developer claims that Luz is three times faster than Theos and slightly faster than the competing Dragon build system. Below you will find a terminal-based benchmark comparing Luz to Theos:
One of the main advantages of Luz is that it can build projects with submodules in parallel, which means that the build time of a project takes as long as it takes to build the longest submodule. This contributes to its speed advantages.
Another important feature of Luz is that, according to the developer, it comes with out-of-the-box non-root support, with a non-root file structure enabled by default. This is especially important as modern jailbreaks on iOS and iPadOS 15 and later are expected to take rootless form due to changes in Apple software security.
It looks like Luz has the potential to make it easier to develop jailbreak tweaks for the latest jailbreaks, so it’s not surprising that more jailbreak tweak developers will take advantage of this.
Obviously this is not something that end users will appreciate as much as jailbreak tweak developers, but end users should be happy to see a new support system that makes life easier for jailbreak tweak developers because it could mean more jailbreak tweak releases in the future. the future as we move towards rootless jailbreak dynamics.
The Luz project is fully open source on the developer’s GitHub page for anyone who wants to learn more about it. Installation looks incredibly simple, requiring just one terminal command.
Are you excited to see how Luz is transforming the jailbreak tweak development landscape in the future? Let us know in the comments section below.