The redo Build System

This repository is based on code and documentation licensed from Avery Pennarun. Original contributions are copyright (C) 2016 by Rob Bocchino.

This repository is a fork of Avery Pennarun's implementation of redo ("apenwarr redo"). redo is a suite of simple but powerful tools that let you write build rules as shell scripts (called ".do files") with dynamic dependency tracking. For more information about apenwarr redo, see this README file.

Goals

My goals for this repository are as follows:

1. To be backwards compatible with, and provide a drop-in replacement for, apenwarr redo.

2. As development on apenwarr redo seems to have stopped, to continue development, including code refactoring, enhancements, and bug fixes.

Contributions

To date, I have made the following improvements to apenwarr redo:

• Improved the installation procedure.

• Fixed the problem of multiple inconsistent .redo directories.

• Improved the behavior when running a .do script would clobber an existing directory.

• Improved the error reporting when a remove or rename operation fails (e.g., when attempting to create a target in a directory that doesn't exist).

• Added cycle detection, so that redo prints an error message and halts instead of hanging when it encounters a cyclic build dependence.

• Fixed bugs that caused spurious warnings about updated files on some systems.

• Removed the deprecated "old-args" feature.

• Refactored the code.

Contents

This repository contains the following items:

• bash_completion.d: bash completion rules for redo.

• bin: Rules for generating the "binary files" of the redo tool suite (really, they are executable python files).

• defs: Definitions used by the build system in this repository, including system-specific configuration.

• do: A minimal implementation of redo, written in shell, that builds everything without tracking any dependencies. It is useful for running .do files on systems where redo is not available. In particular, you run do on the build system in this repository when you install redo (see below).

• lib: The "library files" for the redo tool suite (they are python files).

• man: Man pages for the redo tool suite.

• shell: Rules for finding a good shell for running .do files.

• tests: Tests for the redo tools.

• version: Rules for computing the redo version from information provided by git.

Requirements

To use this software, you need the following:

1. A Unix environment.

2. A working python 2 installation.

3. A shell capable of running the .do files in this repository (e.g., bash). Any modern Unix system should have such a shell, and the installation procedure should find it (see below).

Installation

To install the software, carry out the following steps:

1. Clone this repository to your computer.

2. Copy defs/config.sh.example to defs/config.sh. Edit the file so the following variables have the desired values:

• INSTALL: The command to use for installation.

• MANDIR: The directory for installing man pages.

• BINDIR: The directory for installing the "binary files" for the redo tools.

• LIBDIR: The directory for installing the library files for the redo tools.

If you don't change anything, the installation will go into subdirectories of $REDO_ROOT/installdir, where REDO_ROOT is the top-level directory of this repository. To install redo globally, change $REDO_ROOT/installdir to something like /usr.

3. In the top-level directory of this repository, run ./do install. Note that if you opted for a global installation in step 2, you may have to run the command with sudo permission (i.e., sudo ./do install).

4. If the directory that you picked for $BINDIR in step 2 is not already in your Unix PATH, then add it now. It's best to do this in the startup configuration file for your shell (e.g., .bashrc).

5. Check that you have a good redo installation: which redo.

Once you have a working installation, you should be able to run redo on any of the .do files in this repository. For example:

redo clean # To clean everything
redo all # To build everything
redo tests/test # To run all the tests in the tests directory