BSDBuild is a cross-platform build system. Derived from the traditional 4.4BSD make libraries, BSDBuild uses simple BSD-style Makefiles (without BSD make extensions), and works natively under most operating systems and make flavors. Since BSDBuild is implemented as a library (as opposed to a macro package), Makefiles are edited directly, as opposed to being compiled (however, if the build directory is separate from the source directory, BSDBuild will produce the required Makefiles in place).

BSDBuild can generate pure Bourne ./configure scripts. To end users, BSDBuild-generated configure scripts look similar to a standard GNU autotools script, but they are faster and more compact. As opposed to autotools configure scripts which use large and confusing macro packages, BSDBuild configure scripts are written in a simple language. The base distribution currently includes over 100 built-in tests for detecting and testing the compatibility of various software, and writing new tests is easy.

BSDBuild-based projects are portable to platforms and development environments where make or ./configure scripts cannot be used at all (e.g., MS-DOS or Windows). Thanks to the Premake utility, sets of "Project Files" for various IDEs (such as OpenWatcom, CodeBlocks and Visual Studio) can be generated and compiled automatically from the original BSDBuild Makefiles.