gnustep-internals.tex

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\begin{document}
\title{GNUstep Makefile Package Internals}
\author{Nicola Pero n.pero@mi.flashnet.it}
\date{last days of June 2001 - revised end of July 2001}
\maketitle
\tableofcontents

\section{Introduction}
This short document attempts to explain simply how the gnustep
makefile package works internally.  When I first wrote this document,
the mechanism used to be extremely complex, involving many recursive
make invocations; I have now simplified it so that it involves only a
single recursive make invocation per target/type/operation.  As a
result, I hope that the mechanism is now so simple that you can figure
out how it works without reading this document, by just reading the
gnustep-make source code.  Anyway, the thing might still not be still
totally trivial at a first approach, so this document might help you
to get familiar with the gnustep-make source code in a shorter time
and with less pain.

\section{From `make' to the internal-all rule}
Imagine for example that in your \texttt{ GNUmakefile} you include both
\texttt{tool.make} and \texttt{library.make}, as in the following example:
\begin{verbatim}
include $(GNUSTEP_MAKEFILES)/common.make

TOOL_NAME = decrypt
decrypt_OBJC_FILES = decrypt.m

LIBRARY_NAME = libDvd
libDvd_OBJC_FILES = decss.m

include $(GNUSTEP_MAKEFILES)/tool.make
include $(GNUSTEP_MAKEFILES)/library.make
\end{verbatim} % $ fool emacs's buggy tex mode
Then you type `make' on the command line.  We want to understand what
happens.

Make will process your \texttt{GNUmakefile}, which includes
\texttt{tool.make}, and that will include \texttt{rules.make}.  In
\texttt{rules.make} make finds the first rule (the one which is
executed), which is
\begin{verbatim}
all:: before-all internal-all after-all
\end{verbatim}
This means that make will build by default that target \texttt{ all},
and that building that target requires building the
\texttt{before-all}, \texttt{internal-all} and \texttt{after-all}
targets.  We ignore the \texttt{before-all} and \texttt{after-all}
targets for now, and only concentrate on the core target, which is
\texttt{internal-all}.

\section{From the internal-all rule to the \%.variables rule}
Make needs to build this target \texttt{internal-all}.  In
\texttt{rules.make} this target appears as
\begin{verbatim}
internal-all::
\end{verbatim}
because of the double colons (that is, because it is
\texttt{internal-all::} rather than \texttt{internal-all:}) this
target can have multiple totally separated rules.  Each rule must be a
double colon rule, and is processed separately from the other rules
(even if they refer to the same target).

The real rules for \texttt{internal-all} are included by the specific 
makefiles; in our example, \texttt{tool.make} includes
\begin{verbatim}
internal-all:: $(TOOL_NAME:=.all.tool.variables)
\end{verbatim} %$
now - in our case - because \texttt{TOOL\_NAME} is \texttt{decrypt}, then
this rule actually means
\begin{verbatim} 
internal-all:: decrypt.all.tool.variables
\end{verbatim}
This means that to build \texttt{internal-all}, make has to build (at
least) the \texttt{decrypt.all.tool.variables} target.
\texttt{library.make} includes the completely analogous rule
\begin{verbatim}
internal-all:: $(LIBRARY_NAME:=.all.library.variables) 
\end{verbatim} %$
which in our case means 
\begin{verbatim}
internal-all:: libDvd.all.library.variables
\end{verbatim}
This rule is completely separated from the other one; to build
\texttt{internal-all}, make has to build the two different targets:
\begin{verbatim}
decrypt.all.tool.variables
libDvd.all.library.variables
\end{verbatim}

\section{The \%.variables rule - dependencies}
The rule for building these targets is in the \texttt{rules.make} file, 
it is the \texttt{\%.variables} rule:
\begin{verbatim}
%.variables: %.tools %.subprojects
@ \
target=$(basename $(basename $*)); \
operation=$(subst .,,$(suffix $(basename $*))); \
type=$(subst -,_,$(subst .,,$(suffix $*))); \
echo Making $$operation for $$type $$target...; \
$(MAKE) -f $(MAKEFILE_NAME) --no-print-directory --no-keep-going \
  internal-$${type}-$$operation \
  INTERNAL_$${type}_NAME=$$target \
  TARGET=$$target \
  _SUBPROJECTS="$($(basename $(basename $*))_SUBPROJECTS)" \
  ...
\end{verbatim}%$
This rule matches all targets ending in \texttt{.variables}.  First of
all, the rule depends on the corresponding \texttt{\%.tools} and
\texttt{\%.subprojects} rules.  This is because before processing the
target itself, gnustep-make needs to process the related subprojects
and (only for frameworks) the framework tools.  We ignore this
complication of subprojects and framework tools for now; if you look
at the \texttt{\%.subprojects} and \texttt{\%.tools} rules you see
that they do nothing if you are not actually using subprojects or
framework tools in your makefile.

\section{The \%.variables rule - second make invocation}
The rule body parses the \texttt{\%.variables} string - for example when
the rule is applied to
\begin{verbatim}
decrypt.all.tool.variables
\end{verbatim}
then (remember that \texttt{\$*} is the stem of the rule,
\texttt{decrypt.all.tool} in this case) it extracts
\begin{verbatim}
target=decrypt
operation=all
type=tool
\end{verbatim}
and then it runs a make subprocess, specific to that target, type and
operation.  In our case, the \texttt{\%.variables} rules is executed
twice, once to build 
\begin{verbatim}
decrypt.all.tool.variables
\end{verbatim}
and once to build
\begin{verbatim}
libDvd.all.tool.variables
\end{verbatim}
so the result is to run two separate make processes:
\begin{verbatim}
make internal-tool-all INTERNAL_tool_NAME=decrypt TARGET=decrypt \
  _SUBPROJECTS="$(decrypt_SUBPROJECTS)" \
  OBJC_FILES="$(decrypt_OBJC_FILES)" \
  ...
make internal-library-all INTERNAL_library_NAME=libDvd TARGET=libDvd \
  _SUBPROJECTS="$(libDvd_SUBPROJECTS)" \
  OBJC_FILES="$(libDvs_OBJC_FILES)" \
  ...
\end{verbatim}
where \texttt{...} stands for a lot of other variables, including all
variables needed to perform the final stage: \texttt{OBJC\_FILES},
\texttt{C\_FILES}, \texttt{JAVA\_FILES},
\texttt{ADDITIONAL\_INCLUDE\_DIRS} etc.  Note that each make
subprocess will get passed different, specific, variables.  If
gnustep-make wants to modify these variables in some way, it does it
at this stage, before passing them to the submake process.  For
example, some library flags are filtered through the
\texttt{WHICH\_LIB\_SCRIPT}.

What this means is that for each target/type/operation, a separate
make process is run.  For example, if you have two tools,
\texttt{decrypt} and \texttt{crypt}, and you want to both compile and install
them, it will run four make subprocesses:
\begin{verbatim}
make internal-tool-all INTERNAL_tool_NAME=decrypt ...
make internal-tool-all INTERNAL_tool_NAME=crypt ...
make internal-tool-install INTERNAL_tool_NAME=decrypt ...
make internal-tool-install INTERNAL_tool_NAME=crypt ...
\end{verbatim}
This is the `second make invocation'.  The make package knows that it
is being invoked for the second time, because of the
\texttt{INTERNAL\_tool\_NAME} being non-empty.

\section{Second make invocation}
Because of the \texttt{INTERNAL\_tool\_NAME} variable being a
non-empty string (while it was empty in the previous top-level
invocation), \texttt{tool.make} will include the actual rules to build
the tool; in particular, the \texttt{internal-tool-all} rule, which is
then executed and builds the tool.  All variables such as
\texttt{OBJC\_FILES} or the library flags are now available directly
in the makefiles, they have already been prepared and preprocessed, so
that the rules in \texttt{tool.make} can just plainly use these
variables naively to perform their job (compiling, installing, or
whatever).

\end{document}