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Re: Incremental build systems, infamake

Cross-posted to 2 groups.

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On Mon, 25 Jul 2011 00:25:34 -0700, Joshua Maurice wrote:

> An incrementally correct build system - is a build system which can
> only produce incrementally correct builds. That is, there is no source
> code changes which a developer may do, inadvertently or purposefully,
> which can result in the build system doing an incrementally incorrect
> build.
> 
> The key part to realize about this requirement is that the build
> system scripts, such as makefiles, are themselves source code under
> this model.

"Source code" is the wrong term; the correct term is "prerequisite".
Nothing prevents you from specifying makefiles as prerequisites.

Ensuring correctness of incremental builds boils down to ensuring that the
list of prerequisites for each target is "adequate". How far you take the
concept of adequacy determines how easy or hard it is for an incremental
build to be incorrect (i.e. differ from a full build).

If you want to be pedantic, then the tools (compiler, linker, make, etc)
need to be prerequisites of the files which they generate, as do the
libraries which those tools use, and anything which influences their
behaviour. And I mean *anything*; e.g. for every prerequisite, you would
need to treat all of its parent directories as prerequisites (to deal with
renaming, changes to mounted filesystems, etc).

If you want to be really pedantic, you would have to treat the data
returned from system calls as prerequisites. For an extreme example, any C
source file which uses the __TIME__ macro will need to be rebuilt whenever
the value returned from time() changes (i.e. always).

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Incremental build systems, infamake Joshua Maurice <joshuamaurice@gmail.com> - 2011-07-25 00:25 -0700
  Re: Incremental build systems, infamake Ian Collins <ian-news@hotmail.com> - 2011-07-25 21:00 +1200
    Re: Incremental build systems, infamake Joshua Maurice <joshuamaurice@gmail.com> - 2011-07-25 02:11 -0700
      Re: Incremental build systems, infamake Ian Collins <ian-news@hotmail.com> - 2011-07-25 21:33 +1200
        Re: Incremental build systems, infamake Joshua Maurice <joshuamaurice@gmail.com> - 2011-07-25 02:38 -0700
          Re: Incremental build systems, infamake Ian Collins <ian-news@hotmail.com> - 2011-07-25 21:55 +1200
          Re: Incremental build systems, infamake Joshua Maurice <joshuamaurice@gmail.com> - 2011-07-25 03:04 -0700
            Re: Incremental build systems, infamake Ian Collins <ian-news@hotmail.com> - 2011-07-25 22:22 +1200
              Re: Incremental build systems, infamake Joshua Maurice <joshuamaurice@gmail.com> - 2011-07-25 03:25 -0700
                Re: Incremental build systems, infamake Ian Collins <ian-news@hotmail.com> - 2011-07-25 23:41 +1200
            Re: Incremental build systems, infamake Jorgen Grahn <grahn+nntp@snipabacken.se> - 2011-07-26 16:11 +0000
              Re: Incremental build systems, infamake Joshua Maurice <joshuamaurice@gmail.com> - 2011-07-26 15:19 -0700
                Re: Incremental build systems, infamake Joshua Maurice <joshuamaurice@gmail.com> - 2011-07-26 15:28 -0700
                Re: Incremental build systems, infamake Joshua Maurice <joshuamaurice@gmail.com> - 2011-07-26 15:49 -0700
  Re: Incremental build systems, infamake Nobody <nobody@nowhere.com> - 2011-07-25 12:52 +0100
    Re: Incremental build systems, infamake Joshua Maurice <joshuamaurice@gmail.com> - 2011-07-25 13:34 -0700
      Re: Incremental build systems, infamake Nobody <nobody@nowhere.com> - 2011-07-27 19:49 +0100
        Re: Incremental build systems, infamake Joshua Maurice <joshuamaurice@gmail.com> - 2011-07-29 03:58 -0700
  Re: Incremental build systems, infamake Jorgen Grahn <grahn+nntp@snipabacken.se> - 2011-07-26 15:04 +0000

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