I use both GNU Make and - woe is me - ClearCase' clearmake.
Now, GNU make respect a flag named MAKEFLAGS, which for me is set to j20 on this multi-core machine I'm on. Unfortunately, clearmake also recognizes this option, yet doesn't except this value. It tells me:
clearmake: Error: Bad option (j)
clearmake: Error: Bad option (2)
clearmake: Error: Bad option (0)
Questions:
Why is this happening? Should ClearMake accommodate GNU Make's usage?
How can I get around it, other then turning the flag off an on repeatedly?
It's been 15 years or so since I used clearmake, but assuming it doesn't support the GNU make-specific GNUMAKEFLAGS variable you can use:
export GNUMAKEFLAGS=-j20
and leave MAKEFLAGS unset.
The "BUILDING SOFTWARE WITH CLEARCASE" clearly states in its T"unsupported Gnu make features" that this option is indeed not supported.
–j [JOBS]
--jobs=[JOBS]
Maybe a clearmake -C -J can help (for testing): there should then be no limit to the number of parallel builds.
Are you calling GNU make from a clearmake build script? Or are you trying to create a single makefile that will support both build tools? I think the GNUMAKEFLAGS EV is safer for GNU make specific values. I would also use
CCASE_MAKEFLAGS for any makeflags that are specific to clearmake.
CCASE_CONC to set the concurrency value. While clearmake no longer passes the -J in MAKEFLAGS, it used to, and if you're using an older clearmake (somewhere in the 7's as I recall), you could upset "child" GNU make sessions since they like -J about as much as clearmake likes -j.
Finally, check the env_ccase man page for the behavior mentioned in CCASE_MAKEFLAGS_V6_OBSOLETE. If you pass MAKEFLAGS explicitly in the build script like
$(MAKE) $(MAKEFLAGS) TARGET=x
And had started clearmake like this:
clearmake -C gnu TARGET=Y
You'll actually get both TARGET macro definitions in the command line. Setting the mentioned EV (at all) avoids the "pass defined macros in MAKEFLAGS" behavior. The switch exists because some people have makefiles that DEPEND on this behavior, while others have ones BROKEN BY this behavior...
Assuming for the sake of argument that your company has a support agreement with either IBM or HCL, this is a good time to use your support channels to bring up clearmake concerns.
Related
I am trying to get a better understanding of debhelper's dh tool. As I understand it, dh is a frontend for various dh_* helper tools. These helper tools can both be called standalone or automatically from the dh tool. Usually a debian/rules file is created which somehow invokes dh and possibly overrides certain dh_* invocations. dh then seems to know which of the dh_* tools it needs to invoke and in which sequence.
The example under /usr/share/doc/debhelper/examples/rules.tiny contains the following as an example for a debian/rules file:
#!/usr/bin/make -f
%:
dh $#
What is the sequence of dh_* helper tools that gets executed by dh as result of this rules file? And more importantly, how does dh determine this sequence and where is this documented.
The sequence of helper tools that will get executed depends on a few things:
what build target is being passed. these include: build-arch, build-indep, build, clean, install-indep, install-arch, install, binary-arch, binary-indep, and binary. The meanings of (most of) these are discussed in Debian Policy §4.9.
the Debhelper compat level (as found in the debian/compat file)
your version of Debhelper (although an effort is made to make different versions work the same given the same compat level)
what helper commands have already been run since the last clean (in debhelper compat levels 9 and lower)
what addons are being used (the --with and --without options)
what override targets exist in the makefile (e.g. override_dh_auto_test)
As you can see, it could be confusing to document which commands are run, in which order, for all the possible build targets and configuration arrangements (or even just for the most common ones). The way to know, therefore, is to use the --no-act argument to dh, with your build directory set up the way you want it.
Here is an example run with the binary target in a dummy build directory I've just made using dh_make, put into compat level 10. The exact commands or the exact ordering you will see will likely be slightly different:
~/dh-demo$ dh binary --no-act
dh_testdir
dh_update_autotools_config
dh_autoreconf
dh_auto_configure
dh_auto_build
dh_auto_test
dh_testroot
dh_prep
dh_installdirs
dh_auto_install
dh_install
dh_installdocs
dh_installchangelogs
dh_installexamples
dh_installman
dh_installcatalogs
dh_installcron
dh_installdebconf
dh_installemacsen
dh_installifupdown
dh_installinfo
dh_systemd_enable
dh_installinit
dh_systemd_start
dh_installmenu
dh_installmime
dh_installmodules
dh_installlogcheck
dh_installlogrotate
dh_installpam
dh_installppp
dh_installudev
dh_installgsettings
dh_bugfiles
dh_ucf
dh_lintian
dh_gconf
dh_icons
dh_perl
dh_usrlocal
dh_link
dh_installwm
dh_installxfonts
dh_strip_nondeterminism
dh_compress
dh_fixperms
dh_strip
dh_makeshlibs
dh_shlibdeps
dh_installdeb
dh_gencontrol
dh_md5sums
dh_builddeb
I have a C++ library and it has a few of C++ static objects. The library could suffer from C++ static initialization fiasco. I'm trying to vet unforeseen translation unit dependencies by randomizing the order of the *.o files during a build.
I visited 2.3 How make Processes a Makefile in the GNU manual and it tells me:
Goals are the targets that make strives ultimately to update. You can override this behavior using the command line (see Arguments to Specify the Goals) ...
I also followed to 9.2 Arguments to Specify the Goals, but a treatment was not provided. It did not surprise me.
Is it possible to have Make randomize its goals? If so, then how do I do it?
If not, are there any alternatives? This is in a test environment, so I have more tools available to me than just GNUmake.
Thanks in advance.
This is really implementation-defined, but GNU Make will process targets from left to right.
Say you have an OBJS variable with the objects you want to randomize, you could write something like (using e.g. shuf):
RAND_OBJS := $(shell shuf -e -- $(OBJS))
random_build: $(RAND_OBJS)
This holds as long as you're not using parallel make (-j option). If you are the order will still be randomized, but it will also depend on number of jobs, system load, current phase of the moon, etc.
Next release of GNU make will have --shuffle mode. It will allow you to execute prerequisites in random order to shake out missing dependencies by running $ make --shuffle.
The feature was recently added in https://savannah.gnu.org/bugs/index.php?62100 and so far is available only in GNU make's git tree.
I'm simply trying to get shift+tab to be a recognized key sequence during my rxvt terminal sessions. So I can map it to usefulness such as:
bindkey "\e[Z" reverse-menu-complete
But, based on my research, I'm pretty sure the answer is no. Just want to make sure.
This is a hard limitation of rxvt? (Is there a technical reason for this limitation? Or just an unsupported feature?)
I can't get it to emit that either, although strangely enough, the rxvt source code (as shipped with Cygwin) does appear to have support for it:
case XK_Tab:
if (shft)
STRCPY(kbuf, "\033[Z");
else {
...
Anyway, rxvt development stopped eight years ago. Try its successor, rxvt-unicode, aka urxvt, where this does work. If you're on Cygwin or MSYS and you were using rxvt without an X server, which urxvt does require, try mintty.
In particular, why is that sometimes the options to some commands are preceded by a + sign and sometimes by a - sign?
for example:
sort -f
sort -nr
sort +4n
sort +3nr
These days, the POSIX standard using getopt() (aka getopt(3)) is widely used as a standard notation, but in the early days, people were experimenting. On some machines, the sort command no longer supports the + notation. However, various commands (notably ar and tar) accept controls without any prefix character - and dd (alluded to by Alok in a comment) uses another convention altogether.
The GNU convention of using '--' for long options (supported by getopt_long(3)) was changed from using '+'. Of course, the X11 software uses a single dash before multi-character options. So, the whole thing is a collection of historic relics as people experimented with how best to handle it.
POSIX documents the Utility Conventions that it works to, except where historical precedent is stronger.
What styles of option handling are there?
[At one time, SO 367309 contained the following material as my answer. It was originally asked 2008-12-15 02:02 by FerranB, but was subsequently closed and deleted.]
How many different types of options do you recognize? I can think of
many, including:
Single-letter options preceded by single dash, groupable when there is
no argument, argument can be attached to option letter or in next
argument (many, many Unix commands; most POSIX commands).
Single-letter options preceded by single dash, grouping not allowed,
arguments must be attached (RCS).
Single-letter options preceded by single dash, grouping not allowed,
arguments must be separate (pre-POSIX SCCS, IIRC).
Multi-letter options preceded by single dash, arguments may be
attached or in next argument (X11 programs; also Java and many programs on Mac OS X with a NeXTSTEP heritage).
Multi-letter options preceded by single dash, may be abbreviated
(Atria Clearcase).
Multi-letter options preceded by single plus (obsolete).
Multi-letter options preceded by double dash; arguments may follow '='
or be separate (GNU utilities).
Options without prefix/suffix, some names have abbreviations or are
implied, arguments must be separate. (AmigaOS
Shell)
For options taking an optional argument, sometimes the argument must be attached (co -p1.3 rcsfile.c),
sometimes it must follow an '=' sign. POSIX doesn't support optional
arguments meaningfully (the POSIX getopt() only allows them for the last
option on the command line).
All sensible option systems use an option consisting of double-dash
('--') alone to mean "end of options" — the following arguments are
"non-option arguments" (usually file names; POSIX calls them 'operands')
even if they start with a
dash. (I regard supporting this notation as an imperative. Be aware that if the -- is preceded by an option requiring an argument, the -- will be treated as the argument to the option, not as the 'end of options' marker.)
Many but not all programs accept single dash as a file name to mean
standard input (usually) or standard output (occasionally). Sometimes,
as with GNU 'tar', both can be used in a single command line:
... | tar -cf - -F - | ...
The first solo dash means 'write to stdout'; the second means 'read file
names from stdin'.
Some programs use other conventions — that is, options not preceded by a
dash. Many of these are from the oldest days of Unix. For example,
'tar' and 'ar' both accept options without a dash, so:
tar cvzf /tmp/somefile.tgz some/directory
The dd command uses opt=value exclusively:
dd if=/some/file of=/another/file bs=16k count=200
Some programs allow you to interleave options and other arguments
completely; the C compiler, make and the GNU utilities run without
POSIXLY_CORRECT in the environment are examples. Many programs expect
the options to precede the other arguments.
Note that git and other VCS commands often use a hybrid system:
git commit -m 'This is why it was committed'
There is a sub-command as one of the arguments. Often, there will be optional 'global' options that can be specified between the command and the sub-command. There are examples of this in POSIX; the sccs command is in this category; you can argue that some of the other commands that run other commands are also in this category: nice and xargs spring to mind from POSIX; sudo is a non-POSIX example, as are svn and cvs.
I don't have strong preferences between the different systems. When
there are few enough options, then single letters with mnemonic value
are convenient. GNU supports this, but recommends backing it up with
multi-letter options preceded by a double-dash.
There are some things I do object to. One of the worst is the same
option letter being used with different meanings depending on what other
option letters have preceded it. In my book, that's a no-no, but I know
of software where it is done.
Another objectionable behaviour is inconsistency in style of handling
arguments (especially for a single program, but also within a suite of
programs). Either require attached arguments or require detached
arguments (or allow either), but do not have some options requiring an
attached argument and others requiring a detached argument. And be
consistent about whether '=' may be used to separate the option and
the argument.
As with many, many (software-related) things — consistency is more
important than the individual decisions. Using tools that automate
and standardize the argument processing helps with consistency.
Whatever you do, please, read the TAOUP's Command-Line Options and
consider Standards for Command Line Interfaces. (Added by J F
Sebastian — thanks; I agree.)
It's completely arbitrary; the command may implement all of the option handling in its own special way or it might call out to some other convenience functions. The getopt() family of functions is pretty popular, so most software written even remotely recently follows the conventions set by those routines. There are always exceptions, of course!
It's left to apps to parse options hence the inconsistency. Expanding on your sort example these are all equivalent for coreutils:
sort -k3
sort --k 3
sort --key 3
sort --key=3
_POSIX2_VERSION=199209 sort +2
A shell command is just a program, and it is free to interpret its command line any way it likes.
Unix never had anything like Apple's interface police to make sure that the command-line interface was consistent across applications. As a result, there is inconsistency, especially in older commands.
Peering into my crystal ball, I think command-line tools will slowly migrate toward GNU standards, double dashes and all. (I grew up with single dashes and still find the double dash very awkward, but it is consistent.)
VendorString() doesn't work, it's always Sun Microsystems, even if it is Xorg built for Solaris.
$ xdpyinfo | grep vendor
vendor string: The X.Org Foundation
vendor release number: 10601901
This is xorg-server 1.6.1 on Linux. Hopefully XOrg and XSun on Solaris will differ here.
To output these two fields, xdpyinfo calls the ServerVendor macro to determine the vendor, then parses the return of the VendorRelease macro differently depending on what ServerVendor was.
By the way, what's VendorString()? I don't have a function or macro by that name...
It's possibly a little hacky, but if you look at the list of extensions returned from Xsun and Xorg you should see that Xorg has a few extra XFree86-derived extensions.
xdpyinfo can be used to list the extensions via the command-line to check for differences; programmatically you can use XListExtensions() or XQueryExtension().
(I haven't got a Xsun X Server to hand but I'm pretty sure when I've looked in the past they have differed quite abit).
Thank you!
Oops, VendorRelease() string it is.
Anyway, unfortunately we cannot bet on this string. It changes often enough to have a trouble, for Xsun as well as for Xorg. I have found a solution working (hopefully) for them and for various other (derived) servers like Xvfb, Xnest etc.
Xsun does use a third value in an array of the keysyms for KP_ (numpad) keycodes. Xorg uses 1-st or 2-nd. A sniffer should first, obtain a keycode for a KP_ keysym, for instance XK_KP_7,
second, sniff what is in the XKeycodeToKeysym(d,keycode, [0-3]). Our XK_KP_7 will be on the index 2 for Xsun.