Permit __DATE__, __TIME__, etc in foreign builds

[rnburn]

I'm using configure_make with apache and get this error

<command-line>:0:10: error: 'redacted' undeclared here (not in a function); did you mean 'rename'?
/root/.cache/bazel/_bazel_root/f8087e59fd95af1ae29e8fcb7ff1a3dc/sandbox/linux-sandbox/5/execroot/apache_bazel_example/external/org_apache_httpd/server/buildmark.c:21:36: note: in expansion of macro '__DATE__'
 static const char server_built[] = __DATE__ " " __TIME__;

because of the options

-Wno-builtin-macro-redefined -D__DATE__="redacted" -D__TIMESTAMP__="redacted" -D__TIME__="redacted"

Could those be disabled by default for these external builds?

[jwnimmer-tri]

From the peanut gallery (not a maintainer): the problem seems to be that the double-quoting is being dropped. A literal "redacted" " " "redacted" would have been just fine. Shell escaping must be wrong somewhere?

[UlysseM]

I doubt you'd ever want to allow these, as they would change build artifacts all the time, which prevent any kinds of caching that bazel relies on.

Try adding this:
configure_options = ["CFLAGS='-Dredacted=\"redacted\"'"],

[rnburn]

Yes, it seems as if the problem is that they're not escaped correctly.

I don't know that it's important for apache - but if they're going to be fixed, I would suggest at least setting them to valid expansions in case there's code that parses them.

[tonybase]

I'm using cmake_external to compile rocksdb and get this error

<command-line>: error: 'redacted' was not declared in this scope
<command-line>: note: in expansion of macro 'redacted'
note: in expansion of macro '__DATE__'

I don't found configure_options attrs from docs.
Could those be disabled by default for these external builds?

[adam-rocska]

I ran into the very same error trying to compile php (yeah...) :
In case someone would like to reproduce it : https://github.com/adam-rocska/rules_php

/Users/rocskaadam/bin/bazel build --tool_tag=ijwb:IDEA:ultimate --curses=no --color=yes --progress_in_terminal_title=no -- //php:php

And in my local user .bazelrc :

common --javabase @bazel_tools//tools/jdk:absolute_javabase --define=ABSOLUTE_JAVABASE=/Users/rocskaadam/lib/jdk-12.0.2.jdk --sandbox_debug --verbose_failures 

test //... --test_output=errors

Update 1 :

It's still compiling, but @UlysseM 's fix does seem to do the trick :
configure_options = ["CFLAGS='-Dredacted=\"redacted\"'"],

Update 2 :

Yes! It did help. Now I'll just have to dig through the rest of my problems.

Workaround that worked for me

@UlysseM 's fix : configure_options = ["CFLAGS='-Dredacted=\"redacted\"'"],

[guoqi]

If i really need this macro, what could i do to disable bazel's replacement? I could bear some loss of performance, but i don't find some solutions so far.

[PalaceChan]

How can this replacement of those macros be disabled? There are use cases which can bear the performance hit but require this

[ilanbiala]

I'm also using cmake_external() and hitting this issue. Is there a workaround/fix when using this rule?

[itdaniher]

@ilanbiala after a bemusing round of string-escape tetris, I have found a solution!

env_vars = {"CFLAGS": "-Dredacted='\\\"redacted\\\"'"},

The same would hold for CXXFLAGS.

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[attilaolah]

The real problem here appears to be that the quoting seems to be different in the CMake and Configure/Make versions.

Here is how build_script.sh looks for a configure_make project (Python in this example):

ARFLAGS="rcsD" ASFLAGS="-U_FORTIFY_SOURCE -Wall -Wthread-safety -Wself-assign -fcolor-diagnostics -fno-omit-frame-pointer -fstack-protector -D__DATE__=\"redacted\" -D__TIME__=\"redacted\" -D__TIMESTAMP__=\"redacted\" -Wno-builtin-macro-redefined -no-canonical-prefixes" CFLAGS="-U_FORTIFY_SOURCE -Wall -Wthread-safety -Wself-assign -fcolor-diagnostics -fno-omit-frame-pointer -fstack-protector -D__DATE__=\"redacted\" -D__TIME__=\"redacted\" -D__TIMESTAMP__=\"redacted\" -Wno-builtin-macro-redefined -no-canonical-prefixes -DDATE='\"redacted\"' -DTIME='\"redacted\"'" CXXFLAGS="-U_FORTIFY_SOURCE -Wall -Wthread-safety -Wself-assign -fcolor-diagnostics -fno-omit-frame-pointer -fstack-protector -std=c++17 -D__DATE__=\"redacted\" -D__TIME__=\"redacted\" -D__TIMESTAMP__=\"redacted\" -Wno-builtin-macro-redefined -no-canonical-prefixes" LDFLAGS="-B${EXT_BUILD_ROOT}/external/llvm/bin --ld-path=${EXT_BUILD_ROOT}/external/llvm/bin/ld.lld -Wl,-no-as-needed -Wl,-z,relro,-z,now -lstdc++ -lm -no-canonical-prefixes -L$EXT_BUILD_DEPS/ffi_lib/lib -L$EXT_BUILD_DEPS/mpdecimal_lib/lib -L$EXT_BUILD_DEPS/z_lib/lib -L$EXT_BUILD_DEPS/openssl_lib/lib" AR="/.${EXT_BUILD_ROOT}/external/llvm/bin/llvm-ar" CC="/.${EXT_BUILD_ROOT}/external/llvm/bin/clang" CXX="/.${EXT_BUILD_ROOT}/external/llvm/bin/clang" CPPFLAGS="-I$EXT_BUILD_DEPS/ffi_lib/include -I$EXT_BUILD_DEPS/mpdecimal_lib/include -I$EXT_BUILD_DEPS/z_lib/include -I$EXT_BUILD_DEPS/openssl_lib/include" "$EXT_BUILD_ROOT/external/lib_python/configure" --prefix=$BUILD_TMPDIR/$INSTALL_PREFIX --disable-shared --with-openssl="${EXT_BUILD_DEPS}/openssl_lib" --with-system-libmpdec

While cmake() puts these into a crosstool_bazel.cmake script, which has a crazy number of escaping going on:

cat > crosstool_bazel.cmake << EOF
set(CMAKE_AR "/.${EXT_BUILD_ROOT}/external/llvm/bin/llvm-ar" CACHE FILEPATH "Archiver")
set(CMAKE_ASM_FLAGS_INIT "-U_FORTIFY_SOURCE -Wall -Wthread-safety -Wself-assign -fcolor-diagnostics -fno-omit-frame-pointer -fstack-protector -D__DATE__='\\"\\\\\\"redacted\\"\\\\\\"' -D__TIME__='\\"\\\\\\"redacted\\"\\\\\\"' -D__TIMESTAMP__='\\"\\\\\\"redacted\\"\\\\\\"' -Wno-builtin-macro-redefined -no-canonical-prefixes")
set(CMAKE_CXX_COMPILER "/.${EXT_BUILD_ROOT}/external/llvm/bin/clang")
set(CMAKE_CXX_FLAGS_INIT "-U_FORTIFY_SOURCE -Wall -Wthread-safety -Wself-assign -fcolor-diagnostics -fno-omit-frame-pointer -fstack-protector -std=c++17 -D__DATE__='\\"\\\\\\"redacted\\"\\\\\\"' -D__TIME__='\\"\\\\\\"redacted\\"\\\\\\"' -D__TIMESTAMP__='\\"\\\\\\"redacted\\"\\\\\\"' -Wno-builtin-macro-redefined -no-canonical-prefixes")
set(CMAKE_C_COMPILER "/.${EXT_BUILD_ROOT}/external/llvm/bin/clang")
set(CMAKE_C_FLAGS_INIT "-U_FORTIFY_SOURCE -Wall -Wthread-safety -Wself-assign -fcolor-diagnostics -fno-omit-frame-pointer -fstack-protector -D__DATE__='\\"\\\\\\"redacted\\"\\\\\\"' -D__TIME__='\\"\\\\\\"redacted\\"\\\\\\"' -D__TIMESTAMP__='\\"\\\\\\"redacted\\"\\\\\\"' -Wno-builtin-macro-redefined -no-canonical-prefixes")
set(CMAKE_EXE_LINKER_FLAGS_INIT "-B${EXT_BUILD_ROOT}/external/llvm/bin --ld-path=${EXT_BUILD_ROOT}/external/llvm/bin/ld.lld -Wl,-no-as-needed -Wl,-z,relro,-z,now -lstdc++ -lm -no-canonical-prefixes")
set(CMAKE_SHARED_LINKER_FLAGS_INIT "-shared -B${EXT_BUILD_ROOT}/external/llvm/bin --ld-path=${EXT_BUILD_ROOT}/external/llvm/bin/ld.lld -Wl,-no-as-needed -Wl,-z,relro,-z,now -lstdc++ -lm -no-canonical-prefixes")
EOF

Note the defines: -D__DATE__='\\"\\\\\\"redacted\\"\\\\\\"'. Something is clearly not right here, but I'm not sure where all these quotes are coming from.

[attilaolah]

One workaround I found was to have r"-D__DATE__=\"redacted\"" in the crosstool config, but then for Python also pass in configure_env_vars = {"CFLAGS": r"""-DDATE='\"redacted\"' -DTIME='\"redacted\"'"""}. This way even though __DATE__ will not have the right escaping, Python will default to use DATE (and TIME) instead and just ignore __DATE__ and __TIME__).

This works until the quoting can be mode more consistent.

---

A good example that uses cmake() and the timestamp macros is Exiv2, e.g. here: https://github.com/attilaolah/wasm/blob/main/lib/exiv2/BUILD.bazel

[jsharpe]

Hopefully the quoting is correct now for CMake based builds. The quotes -D__DATE__='\\"\\\\\\"redacted\\"\\\\\\"'. that @attilaolah observed was indeed incorrect.

Unfortunately for configure style builds there isn't one set of quoting that works everywhere 😭 This is because some configure scripts aren't autotools based scripts and actually are written in other languages e.g. perl or sh and these handle the number of required escapes differently.

For those asking about disabling this - these redactions are configured as part of the cc_toolchain; if you want to turn it off you need to define your own toolchain to do this. If you need help in doing so I'd suggest that you ask on the bazel-discuss mailing list or in the bazel slack.

[attilaolah]

For anyone reading the previous comment, here is a quick link to how one might enable/disable these in the unfiltered_compile_flags option:

https://github.com/attilaolah/wasm/blob/b45df456d0f8b1e4ef414282f2b7848b2b89b55b/toolchains/cc/clang.bzl#L129-L141

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[jheaff1]

I submitted a PR (bazelbuild/bazel#14735) to be able to remove all default flags from the built-in cc toolchains.

I submitted it 4 months ago and it still hasn’t been reviewed yet 😔

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[jvolkman]

@jheaff1 FYI looks like your upstream PR was merged.

[jheaff1]

Yep glad to see it’s in Bazel 6.0!

[jsharpe]

Given bazelbuild/bazel#14735 is merged and there's not a lot we can do about the quoting situation as different build scripts require different styles of quoting, I'm going to close this now.

[carlosgalvezp]

One problem of using 'configure_options' like this is that CFLAGS are being redefined, overriding the toolchain flags entirely. Are there less invasive ways to do it?

[attilaolah]

Another library that seems to break due to the quoting here is gmp, which generates a gmp.h that expects no quotes in CFLAGS :(

#define __GMP_CFLAGS "-U_FORTIFY_SOURCE -fstack-protector -Wall -Wunused-but-set-parameter -Wno-free-nonheap-object -fno-omit-frame-pointer -fno-canonical-system-headers -Wno-builtin-macro-redefined -D__DATE__="redacted" -D__TIMESTAMP__="redacted" -D__TIME__="redacted""