On 7/29/2024 4:30 PM, Bruce Richardson wrote:
On Mon, Jul 29, 2024 at 02:05:52PM +0100, Anatoly Burakov wrote:
A lot of developers use Visual Studio Code as their primary IDE. This
script generates a configuration file for VSCode that sets up basic build
tasks, launch tasks, as well as C/C++ code analysis settings that will
take into account compile_commands.json that is automatically generated
by meson.
Files generated by script:
- .vscode/settings.json: stores variables needed by other files
- .vscode/tasks.json: defines build tasks
- .vscode/launch.json: defines launch tasks
- .vscode/c_cpp_properties.json: defines code analysis settings
The script uses a combination of globbing and meson file parsing to
discover available apps, examples, and drivers, and generates a
project-wide settings file, so that the user can later switch between
debug/release/etc. configurations while keeping their desired apps,
examples, and drivers, built by meson, and ensuring launch configurations
still work correctly whatever the configuration selected.
This script uses whiptail as TUI, which is expected to be universally
available as it is shipped by default on most major distributions.
However, the script is also designed to be scriptable and can be run
without user interaction, and have its configuration supplied from
command-line arguments.
Signed-off-by: Anatoly Burakov <anatoly.bura...@intel.com>
---
Just was trying this out, nice script, thanks.
Thanks for the feedback! Comments below.
Initial thoughts concerning the build directory:
- the script doesn't actually create the build directory, so there is no
guarantee that the build directory created will have the same parameters
as that specified in the script run. I'd suggest in the case where the
user runs the script and specifies build settings, that the build
directory is then configured using those settings.
I'm not sure I follow.
The script creates a command for VSCode to create a build directory
using configuration the user has supplied at script's run time. The
directory is not created by the script, that is the job of meson build
system. This script is merely codifying commands for meson to do that,
with the expectation that the user is familiar with VSCode workflow and
will go straight to build commands anyway, and will pick one of them.
Are you suggesting running `meson setup` right after?
Assuming we do that, it would actually then be possible to adjust launch
tasks to only include *actual* built apps/examples (as well as infer
things like platform, compiler etc.), as that's one weakness of my
current "flying blind" approach, so I wouldn't be opposed to adding an
extra step here, just want to make sure I understand what you're saying
correctly.
- On the other hand, when the build directory already exists - I think the
script should pull all settings from there, rather than prompting the
user.
That can be done, however, my own workflow has been that I do not ever
keep build directories inside my source directory, so it would not be
possible to pick up directories anywhere but the source directory.
I also think from the point of view of the script it would be easier to
start from known quantities rather than guess what user was trying to do
from current configuration, but I guess a few common-sense heuristics
should suffice for most use cases, such as e.g. inferring debug builds.
- I'm not sure I like the idea for reconfiguring of just removing the build
directory and doing a whole meson setup command all over again. This
seems excessive and also removes the possibility of the user having made
changes in config to the build dir without re-running the whole config
script. For example, having tweaked the LTO setting, or the
instruction_set_isa_setting. Rather than deleting it and running meson
setup, it would be better to use "meson configure" to adjust the one
required setting and let ninja figure out how to propagate that change.
That saves the script from having to track all meson parameters itself.
Last I checked, meson doesn't have a command that would "setup or
configure existing" a directory, it's either "set up new one" or
"configure existing one". I guess we could set up a fallback of
"configure || setup".
- Finally, and semi-related, this script assumes that the user does
everything in a single build directory. Just something to consider, but
my own workflow till now has tended to keep multiple build directories
around, generally a "build" directory, which is either release or
debugoptimized type, and a separate "build-debug" directory + occasionally
others for build testing. When doing incremental builds, the time taken to
do two builds following a change is a lot less noticable than the time taken
for periodic switches of a single build directory between debug and release
mode.
The problem with that approach is the launch tasks, because a launch
task can only ever point to one executable, so if you have multiple
build directories, you'll have to have multiple launch tasks per
app/example. I guess we can either tag them (e.g. "Launch dpdk-testpmd
[debug]", "Launch dpdk-testpmd [asan]" etc.), or use some kind of
indirection to "select active build configuration" (e.g. have one launch
task but overwrite ${config:BUILDDIR} after request for configuration,
so that launch tasks would pick up actual executable path at run time
from settings). I would prefer the latter to be honest, as it's much
easier to drop a script into ./vscode and run it together with
"configure" command to switch between different build/launch
configurations. What do you think?
Final thoughts on usability:
- Please don't write gdbsudo to /usr/local/bin without asking the user
first. Instead I think it should default to $HOME/.local/bin, but with a
prompt for the user to specify a path.
It's not creating anything, it's just printing out a snippet, which, if
run by user, would do that - the implication is obviously that the user
may correct it if necessary. The script actually picks up path to
`gdbsudo` from `which` command, so if the user puts their command to
$HOME/.local/bin or something, it would get picked up if it's in PATH. I
see your point about maybe suggesting using a home directory path
instead of a system wide path, I can change that.
- While I realise your primary concern here is an interactive script, I'd
tend towards requiring a cmdline arg to run in interactive mode and
instead printing the help usage when run without parameters. Just a
personal preference on my part though.
I found it to be much faster to pick my targets, apps etc. using a
couple of interactive windows than to type out parameters I probably
don't even remember ahead of time (especially build configurations!),
and I believe it's more newbie-friendly that way, as I imagine very few
people will want to learn arguments for yet-another-script just to start
using VSCode. It would be my personal preference to leave it as
default-to-TUI, but maybe recognizing a widely used `-i` parameter would
be a good compromise for instant familiarity.
/Bruce
--
Thanks,
Anatoly
