At its invokation GmkPack creates a pack and a script inside this pack to compile the source code, to archive objects libraries and to load executables.
The compilation script is written in Shell and can be edited for modifications. For instance one can modify the compilation options, decide whether libraries and/or executables should be made after the compilation is successfull, etc.
To run fast, only the source that needs to be recomputed will be recomputed (like Make, GmkPack will compile a source file only if the corresponding object file does not exist or is older than the source file).
The source code dependencies are analysed so that what should be recompiled will be (for instance, should a module be modified,then its dependencies would be taken into account by GmkPack itself).
GmkPack tries to protect the user from any mistake ; for instance an object libraries will not be made unless the compilation is successfull (unless the user forces GmkPack to ignore the compilation).
A huge amount of source code can be compiled using more than one processor. The algorithm is so that GmkPack analyses the code dependencies in order to parallelize partially the compilation of modules.
The compilation of such ''non-standard'' pieces of code like ODB or the blacklisting (which require the compilation and use of a precompiler) is fully supported and transparent to the user.