If you use strace to detect dependencies you might have to do a thorough patent search. I will say no more because it's not my place to.
Regards Tim On Wed, 12 Jun 2019, 03:09 David A. Wheeler, <dwhee...@dwheeler.com> wrote: > Problem: > > Makefiles often have errors, and they lay dormant because they're > undetected. > > On Tue, 11 Jun 2019 07:44:31 -0700, <th...@vmware.com> wrote: > > Considering that many build systems created with Make do not properly > > perform incremental builds (because all the necessary rules are not > > written, or are written incorrectly), it's also a way to trivially > > make a build that is mysteriously broken because one or more files > > will not be properly rebuilt. > > Of course, that's a potential problem for *any* use of make. > Garbage in, garbage out. I use automated dependency generation > where I can, but the generators can have bugs & not > all situations have a generator. > > > Potential solution: > > Perhaps there should be a make flag that attempts to detect & warn > about missing dependency information during make execution, > to help people fix their makefiles. > > Basically, when running a rule, make could enable strace to see > what is *actually* getting checked/read & written, compare that to what the > rule *claims* are the prerequisites & targets, and then complain about > differences. > > I did some brief experiments using: > strace -f -e trace=%file gcc -o b.o b.c > > As expected, there are a huge number of special-case events. > But if you only consider file-related events in a specific directory or > down > (which could probably default to the current directory), including > relative paths, most of the events that would not normally go in a > makefile disappear. It's also helped if you limit the set of system calls > that > need to be considered (e.g., openat is really important on Ubuntu). > > It might be much easier if this required other tools (like strace) to work, > instead of directly implementing the tracing in make. > This mechanism could be slow, but that's okay; I envision doing this > checking occasionally, instead of doing it on every run. > This might not be implemented on all platforms, but it would be useful > on many platforms & help people fix their makefiles for all. > > --- David A. Wheeler > > _______________________________________________ > Bug-make mailing list > Bug-make@gnu.org > https://lists.gnu.org/mailman/listinfo/bug-make >
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