CTinker - C/C++ Project Introspection and Augmentation Tool

C Tinker, pronounced see-tinker (or humorously "stinker", as suggested by Chuck Ocheret) allows you to get in the middle of the build process of a make/Ninja-style project and augment the compilation and linking as well as extract and redirect artifacts using policies you can't implement otherwise even with LDFLAGS/CFLAGS magic.

Problem

More formally the problem CTinker solves can be stated as follows:

I need to get in the middle of a build process of a project I can know intimately but do not control and that I have no intention of maintaining a fork/patches for, or for which I need to obtain runtime dynamic control of the build process.

Solution

Overview

CTinker is capable of getting in the middle of virtually any build process by:

1. Starting in the supervisor mode.
2. Creating a temporary directory full of toolkit-specific (e.g. for LLVM Clang it's clang, ar etc) symlinks referring back to CTinker executable.
3. Setting up environ and a local socket to communicate with the workers.
4. Invoking the build process as specified by the user.
5. Being invoked for each tool invocation in a worker mode (based on environmental variables), communicating with the supervisor, sending command-line arguments to the supervisor process and then invoking the tool itself.
6. If specified, invoking scripting handlers before and after the build as a whole (in the supervisor) and before and after each intercepted tool invocation (in the worker).

As a further illustration, if the original process invocation chain for a sample build is as follows:

make => clang => lld, => make => clang, => clang => lld

then the same build instrumented with CTinker will produce the following process invocation chain:

ctinker => make => ctinker-clang => clang => ctinker-lld => lld, => make => ctinker-clang => clang, => ctinker-clang => clang => ctinker-lld => lld

Scripting

Scripting is the most powerful part of CTinker that provides an ability to really change how build functions at runtime. It is implemented via a visitor pattern, invoking functions specified in the user-supplied script:

def ctinker_start(env: Dict[str, str], work_dir: Path):
    """Invoked by CTinker `supervisor` prior to the main build process
    
    Changes to the `env` dictionary propagate to the main build process.
    """
    pass

def ctinker_finish(env: Dict[str, str], work_dir: Path, tool_calls: List[Tuple[Any]], return_code: int):
    """Invoked by CTinker `supervisor` after the main build process exits

    `tool_calls` is a `list` of `tuple`s of `(tool, tool_args, return_code, cwd, script_result)`, where `script_result`
    is the value returned by `ctinker_after_tool`.
    """
    pass


def ctinker_before_tool(env: Dict[str, str], tool: str, tool_args: List[str], work_dir: Path, cwd: Path):
    """Invoked by CTinker `worker` prior to the tool process
    
    Changes to the `env` dictionary propagate to the tool process.
    Changes to the `tool_args` list propagate to the tool process.
    """
    pass

def ctinker_after_tool(env: Dict[str, str], tool: str, tool_args: List[str], work_dir: Path, cwd: Path, 
                       return_code: int) -> Any:
    """Invoked by CTinker `worker` after the tool process exits
    
    Returned value, **if truthy**, will be stored and will appear 
    as the last entry in the `tool_calls` passed to `ctinker_finish`
    """
    pass

It is guaranteed that ctinker_start - ctinker_finish and ctinker_before_tool - ctinker_after_tool pairs will be executed in the same supervisor and worker processes respectively and therefore you can pass values between the start/finish and before/after functions (for example by a global or within the same instance of an object).

Help

$ ctinker --help
usage: ctinker [-h] [-s SCRIPT] [-o OUT] [-f {text,pickle}] [-p PATHS]
               [-w WORK_DIR] -t {clang} [-l [{clang,__default}]]
               [-L LINKER_TOOL_OVERRIDE]
               [--linker-flags-name LINKER_FLAGS_NAME]
               ...

CTinker project introspection and augmentation tool

positional arguments:
  command               build command to execute

optional arguments:
  -h, --help            show this help message and exit
  -s SCRIPT, --script SCRIPT
                        a Python script containing visitor-style hooks
                        (default: None)
  -o OUT, --out OUT     a path to a file where all tools, their arguments and
                        exit codes will be recorded (default: None)
  -f {text,pickle}, --format {text,pickle}
                        the format of the output file (default: text)
  -p PATHS, --path PATHS
                        prepend a leading PATH entry to be inherited by the
                        invoked command (default: None)
  -w WORK_DIR, --work-dir WORK_DIR
                        sets a work directory to be something other than
                        current working directory (default: )
  -t {clang}, --toolkit {clang}
                        enable specific compilation interception modes
                        (default: None)
  -l [{clang,__default}], --linker-intercept [{clang,__default}]
                        intercept linker with --linker-flags-name env var
                        using the specified toolkit (default: None)
  -L LINKER_TOOL_OVERRIDE, --linker-tool-override LINKER_TOOL_OVERRIDE
                        specify linker tool name directly (may not work if no
                        toolkit provides it) (default: None)
  --linker-flags-name LINKER_FLAGS_NAME
                        specify linker environmental variable (default:
                        LDFLAGS)

Example

TBW

Troubleshooting

1. Printing to sys.stdout from the worker is dangerous as the stdout is often interpreted by the invoking tool which can lead to a crash in the tool expecting certain data format. print("debug!", file=sys.stderr) is generally safe.