The Swiss Army knife for Nextcloud app development: one generic Makefile for building, packaging, deploying, versioning and App Store management of a Nextcloud app.

Everything is derived from the app itself, so a standard app needs no build config at all — drop it in, run make, done. Composer and npm run in throwaway containers, so the host needs neither PHP nor Node.

Commit the bootstrap stub as your app's Makefile, once:

curl -fLO https://raw.githubusercontent.com/ernolf/ncmake/main/bootstrap/Makefile
git add Makefile

That single dozen-line file is all your repository carries: it fetches the real Makefile into a per-machine cache and includes it from there, so every clone of your app runs the current ncmake from one shared cache — nothing else lands in your checkout. Then:

make            # colorized, annotated help with your app id, version and cert status
make build      # composer + npm, each in a throwaway container
make dist       # stage the runtime file set and pack the release tarball

New here? Start with Getting started and the step-by-step walkthrough.

• No host toolchain — composer and npm run in throwaway containers on the PHP and Node versions the app declares; you need only podman or docker.
• Nothing to configure — app id, version, build steps and the shipped file set are read from info.xml, composer.json, package.json and .gitignore.
• Keep-model packaging — a release ships an allowlist of runtime paths, so a stray dev file can never leak in, and the same staged set feeds dist, rsync and cp.
• One shared, self-updating Makefile — a dozen-line stub per app; update ncmake once and every app on the machine follows.
• The full release lifecycle — a validated version bump, a changelog from your conventional commits, a signed tag, and App Store signing and publishing.
• Managed CI workflows — installed from upstream templates, tracked against local edits, and kept current by an auto-updater that opens pull requests.

Wondering how it compares to krankerl, or why it is built this way? → Why ncmake

Everything is in the wiki; its sidebar has the full set. Good entry points:

• New to ncmake → Getting started · Step by step
• Building & releasing → How ncmake understands your app · Building and packaging · Releasing · Per-app tuning · Target reference
• CI workflows → Workflows · Workflow updater · GitHub App · GitHub PAT · Deleting merged branches
• App Store → App Store
• Installing an ncmake app (for your app's users) → Installation

GNU make, git, curl, openssl, rsync, python3; optionally xmllint (ncmake falls back to grep without it). For containerized builds: podman or docker — otherwise RUNTIME=bare with composer and npm on the PATH.

If ncmake is useful to you, add the badge to your app's README (see Getting started):

[![built with ncmake](https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/gh/ernolf/ncmake@main/img/ncmake-badge.svg)](https://github.com/ernolf/ncmake)

MIT