GPRbuild: File specific compiler switches - ada

Does GPRbuild support a configuration option or any other way to apply special compiler switches only to special files?
That could be useful if -gnatyXYZ switches for strict syntax checks are used for most files in a project but some external / not project specific Ada files are not compliant with the enforced syntax checks.

You can specify both default switches for all Ada files and specific switches for individual files:
package Compiler is
for Default_Switches ("Ada")
use ("-O2");
for Switches ("proc.adb")
use ("-O0");
end Compiler;
GNAT's documentation gives more info.

Related

How do you specify the name of the executable in your gprfile? Can it be above the gprfile's directory?

This information is available elsewhere but not consolidated to this particular use-case, hence I felt the need for a stackoverflow self-answer that I (and others) can refer to. Feel free to add your own answers if there is anything I have missed.
project some_project is
for Source_Dirs use ("src");
for Object_Dir use "obj";
for Main use ("main.adb");
package Compiler is
for Default_Switches ("ada") use ("-O1", "-gnatwae");
end Compiler;
end some_project;
I want to have this generate ../some_program_name.exe. How do I specify the name of the executable this gpr project will generate? Can it be in a directory above?
Add this to your gpr file:
for Exec_Dir use "..";
package Builder is
for Executable ("main.adb") use "some_program_name";
end Builder;
Note that the .exe suffix is added automatically if you are on windows.
In the same Builder package, only the extension can also be changed
for Executable_Suffix use ".elf";
The information was scattered across Adacore's docs for the GNAT Project Manager.

CMake - Copy DLLs to the runtime output directory

I am trying to create a simple CMake that retrieves the DLLs of Qt and copy it in the directory in which cmake creates my executable.
It works great using g++ or clang, but MSVC (Visual Studio 2017) creates a Debug or Release directory.
I can't find a way to retrieve the path to the real directory in which the executable is written (${CMAKE_CURRENT_BINARY_DIR} returns the directory parent of Release or Debug).
I've seen people using the target property RUNTIME_OUTPUT_DIRECTORY but it is empty when I use it.
Any idea how I can do this ? I do not want to change the output directory, I just want to know its path (so I do not want to change the value of RUNTIME_OUTPUT_DIRECTORY)
Thanks!
In Visual Studio, during configuration step (when CMakeLists.txt files are processed) build type is not set, so no build-type-dependent variable or property is usable directly. Instead, generator-expressions should be used.
E.g., output directory for executable or library target can be extracted with $<TARGET_FILE_DIR:tgt> generator expression. It will return full directory, with "Release/" or "Debug/" already appended.
Note, that generator expressions can be used only when their usage is explicitly allowed in documentation. E.g., they cannot be used in message() command.
Alternatively, you may explicitely set variable CMAKE_RUNTIME_OUTPUT_DIRECTORY, so for every build type will just append appropriate subdirectory to it. But for extracting this subdirectory, you should again resort to generator expressions: $<CONFIG>.
Technically, it is possible to set the same output directory for any build type. But this is not recommended, because a file from one build type will be overwritten by the file from another build type.
Example for Visual Studio 2022 and CMake.
Place this at the end of CMakeLists.txt:
if (WIN32)
add_custom_command(
TARGET qcpp POST_BUILD
COMMAND ${CMAKE_COMMAND} -E copy_if_different "${PROJECT_SOURCE_DIR}/include/external/c.dll" "${CMAKE_BINARY_DIR}"
COMMAND_EXPAND_LISTS
)
endif()
See list of CMake variables.
Note the "qcpp" in the preceding command. This is the project name and should match this line at the start:
project ("qcpp")
Appendix A - Testing
To verify, if you generate a Visual Studio Project using mkdir x && cd x && cmake .., you can see that CMake has added a post-build step to the solution config:
As of CMake 3.21+, the $<TARGET_RUNTIME_DLLS:tgt> generator expression can help copy dependent DLLs to the build tree. Quoting the documentation:
List of DLLs that the target depends on at runtime. This is determined by the locations of all the SHARED and MODULE targets in the target's transitive dependencies. Using this generator expression on targets other than executables, SHARED libraries, and MODULE libraries is an error. On non-DLL platforms, it evaluates to an empty string.
This generator expression can be used to copy all of the DLLs that a target depends on into its output directory in a POST_BUILD custom command.
Docs link: https://cmake.org/cmake/help/latest/manual/cmake-generator-expressions.7.html#genex:TARGET_RUNTIME_DLLS
An example of how to use this (adapted from the docs) follows:
find_package(foo REQUIRED)
add_executable(main main.cpp)
target_link_libraries(main PRIVATE foo::foo)
if (WIN32)
add_custom_command(
TARGET main POST_BUILD
COMMAND ${CMAKE_COMMAND} -E copy_if_different
$<TARGET_RUNTIME_DLLS:main> $<TARGET_FILE_DIR:main>
COMMAND_EXPAND_LISTS
)
endif ()
The if (WIN32) check ensures that $<TARGET_RUNTIME_DLLS:main> won't be empty, which would cause the command to fail (rather than do nothing). COMMAND_EXPAND_LISTS makes sure that the semicolon-delimited list returned by $<TARGET_RUNTIME_DLLS:main> will be split into multiple arguments, rather than passed as a single argument with (escaped) semicolons in it.
Note also that UNKNOWN libraries will be ignored by this generator expression. These are common when using the built-in Find modules, rather than using a library's first-party CMake config-mode package. In these cases, you will have to manually inspect the module variables to find the library paths and add custom commands for each one yourself.
For Qt specifically, I would expect the newer CMake integration in Qt6 to "just work", though I haven't tested it. It might also work in Qt5, but again I haven't tested it.

OCaml: How can I get the path to the *current module* / my project's directory?

I'm new to OCaml, but I'm trying to figure out the equivalent of __filename, __dirname from Node. That is, I need to build a path relative to the file containing the code in question.
For reference, I'm working through Ghuloum's IACC: http://ell.io/tt$ocameel
I'm building my first compiler, and I have an utterly-simplistic ‘runtime’ file (in C — temporarily) adjacent to the compiler's source-code. I need to be able to pass the path to this file, as an argument (or a pre-compiled version, I suppose) to gcc or my linker, to have it linked against my compiler's output when I invoke the linker/assembler tooling.
(This may be a stupid question — I'm at a bit of an unknown-unknown here, “how does a compiler get the runtime to the linker”, or something like that. Any commentary about idiomatic solutions to this is welcome, even if it's not a direct answer to the above question!)
If you're running the source file directly via ocaml myfile.ml, Sys.argv.(0) will give you the path to the source file and you can use Filename.dirname to get the directory from that.
If you first compile the source file into an executable and then run the executable, Sys.argv.(0) will give you the name of the executable. In that scenario it's impossible to get the location of the source code (especially if you consider that the person running the executable might not even have the source code on their system).
If you set up your project structure, so that your sources live in src/, your compiled binary in bin/ and the compiled stdlib in lib/, you could just use Filename.dirname Sys.argv.(0) ^ "../lib" as the library path for gcc. This will work whether you run ocaml src/mycompiler.ml, bin/mycompiler or just mycompiler after installing everything to /usr/ or /usr/local/.

source_dirs doesn't work in .gpr scipt

I've inherited an Ada/C++ project and I'm trying to use gprbuild to automate the build process (which was previously done with a set of about 12 .bat files). I'm totally new to Ada and gprbuild, but have actually made pretty good progress. I can compile the .exe's that I need, but not the library. I am not at liberty to completely share the .gpr file, but the relevant parts look like this:
[snip]
for Source_Dirs use (
"c_plus_plus_files",
"ada_files",
"..\another_project\some_other_ada_files",
"..\another_project\even_more_ada_files"
);
[snip]
for Source_Files use (
"my_ada_file.ads",
"another_ada_file.ads",
"one_more_ada_file.adb",
"c_plus_plus_file.cpp"
);
[snip]
When I run "gprbuild -P my_project.gpr" it in turn runs "gcc -c gnat5 one_more_ada_file.adb" and complains that it cannot find a certain file that one_more_ada_file.adb depends on. The dependency is in ..\another_project\even_more_ada_files, so I would expect it to be found. But if I copy the dependency into the same folder as one_more_ada_file.adb, the error goes away.
Because of how the VCS is setup and how we're sharing code between two projects, I'd much rather figure out what's wrong with how I'm using "for source_dirs use" than to keep multiple copies of all the ada files.
Again, I'm an Ada/GPS newb, so if I'm leaving out relevant information, please let me know.
Update: It appears that the specific problem isn't that source_dirs isn't doing anything at all, but that it doesn't handle having two source dirs where .ads files in one dir depend on .ads files in the other. That is, even within my "other" project above, an .ads file in some_other_ada_files that depends on an .ads file in even_more_ada_files doesn't get compiled with the gcc -c -gnat05 command when I run gprbuild (error: the file in even_more_ada_files not found), but it does get compiled if I run the gcc command by hand (or in a .bat script) with two -I flags, one for each directory.
When dealing with multiple projects, you should normally create a .gpr-file for each project, and let your projects depend on the other projects as needed.
Thus:
project another_project is
for Source_Dirs use
("some_other_ada_files",
"even_more_ada_files");
end another_project;
and then:
with "..\another_project\another_project.gpr"
project The_Project is
for Source_Dirs use
("c_plus_plus_files",
"ada_files");
end The_Project;

Get Ada (compiled with GNAT) to import files from outside current directory?

I'm doing an intro to programming course at university, and the language of choice is Ada. I'm coding in Kate and compiling with GNAT 4.6.3. We have to use teacher-provided libraries for our programs, like so:
with foo;
use foo;
Of course, then the file foo.adb has to be contained in the same directory as my source file. Since multiple projects depend on this one library, and I like to keep each project in its own subdirectory, I have to copy the library files into each new project. Not to mention have my library code and source code all in the same directory.
So is there any way to sort of go:
with ../../lib/foo
use ../../lib/foo
?
I've tried looking around a bit but all I've found is stuff about compiler options. I'd rather not have to mess around with those, especially because only certain projects are going to be requiring this particular library, so it wouldn't make sense to add it to a global compiler setting and have the compiler pointlessly searching paths it doesn't need to search.
I would use the GNAT Project facility with command-line gnatmake.
I just set up a little example (so I can be sure what I say works!). I have 3 directories; teacher/ contains the teacher-provided source, which I assume you won't want to change and may not have write access to anyway, jacks_lib/ contains teacher.gpr which points to teacher/ (you could put your own library code there as well) and jack/ contains your code main.adb and main.gpr.
jacks_lib/teacher.gpr:
project Teacher is
-- This project calls up the teacher-supplied source.
-- This is a list of paths, which can be absolute but
-- if relative are relative to the directory where this .gpr
-- is found.
for Source_Dirs use ("../teacher");
-- Keep the built objects (.ali, .o) out of the way. Use the -p
-- gnatmake flag to have directories like this built
-- automatically.
for Object_Dir use ".build";
end Teacher;
jack/main.gpr:
-- teacher.gpr tells where to find library source and how to build it.
with "../jacks_lib/teacher";
project Main is
-- for Source_Dirs use ("."); (commented out because it's the default)
-- Keep built objects out of the way
for Object_Dir use ".build";
-- Build executables here rather than in Object_Dir
for Exec_Dir use ".";
-- What's the main program? (there can be more than one)
for Main use ("main.adb");
end Main;
jack/main.adb:
with Foo;
procedure Main is
begin
null;
end Main;
Then, in jack/,
$ gnatmake -p -P main.gpr
object directory "/Users/simon/tmp/jacks_lib/.build" created for project teacher
object directory "/Users/simon/tmp/jack/.build" created for project main
gcc -c -I- -gnatA /Users/simon/tmp/jack/main.adb
gcc -c -I- -gnatA /Users/simon/tmp/teacher/foo.ads
gnatbind -I- -x /Users/simon/tmp/jack/.build/main.ali
gnatlink /Users/simon/tmp/jack/.build/main.ali -o /Users/simon/tmp/jack/main
I should add that I'm using GCC 4.7.0 on Mac OS X, but this should work fine with any recent GNAT.
Compiler options are the way you manage source code locations for a build--defining "search paths"--particularly the "-I" (include) option for gcc-based (like GNAT) and most other compilers.
If you're building from the command line, it's simply a matter of:
gnatmake -I../../lib/foo -Iother/path -Iyet/another/path project1_main.adb
gnatmake -I../../lib/foo -Isome/path -Iyet/another/path project2_main.adb
If you're using GPS (GNAT Programming Studio), then open the Project Properties dialog, select the Source dirs tab, and add the search paths there. (You can also directly edit a Project Properties file (".gpr") directly, but I rarely do that. YMMV.) Compiler settings are easily set up on a per-project basis, so there's no "global compiler setting" issue with which one would have to concern themself.
Its not been explicitly mentioned in the answers sofar, so I will say it:
The with & use clauses in Ada make no claims about the location of the withed & used units, only that they exist.
When it comes to actually finding the units, that is entirely up to the make scripts & .gpr files & compilation options or whatever else you come up with.
This is how Ada creates a degree of code portability (by not binding the code to a directory structure!), You just need to correct the compilation options :)
Also, learning about compiler options is almost never a bad idea, it will serve you well in Ada & many other languages.
Amplifying on #MarcC's answer, the GNAT User's Guide covers gnatmake in chapter 6, under §6.2 Switches for gnatmake: Source and library search path switches; the guide should be included with your distribution.
The gnatmake command is a convenient target for make, as shown in this example.

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