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makepp_release_notes -- Major changes in each version of makepp

DESCRIPTION

Version 2.1 (under development)
· Builtin &template mini-language documentation rewritten. It now has an
"@include(filename)@" macro.

· C Scanner now takes into account compiler specific path variables like
"C_INCLUDE_PATH" or "LIB".

· Parens now nest as in GNU make or Shell: "$(name ...()...)"

· New environment variable "MAKEPP_DEBUG".

· Installation defaults for html-doc and man have changed slightly.

· The new option "--loop" is the successor to "--stop-after-loading", which it enhances
to get the head start for every edit compile cycle in an endless loop.

· The "include" statements and the functions "find-first-upwards" and "find-upwards"
will no longer search higher than a RootMakeppfile, if one is present.

· The gmake style of putting the rule to make an include file after the include
statement is not recommended, but now supported. Thus the option "--defer-include"
has been removed.

· All pre-2.0 features which issued deprecated-warnings are eliminated, as are
$Mpp::Makefile::legacy_functions and $MAKEPP_INSTALL_OLD_MODULES.

· You can use the new makeppinfo, mppi option "--unremembered" to spot no longer needed
files.

· You can use the new makeppreplay, mppr option "--sed" to replay a command differently,
e.g. to stop after preprocessing or to add debugging options to the linker.

· There was an undocumented (and slightly buggy) feature whereby making .makepp/log
unwritable would suppress logging. Now instead it falls back to "--verbose", so you
must pass "--no-log" if you want that. This option and a few others were also already
available for makeppreplay, mppr, but not documented.

· At least Perl 5.8 is required.

Version 2.0 (March 2012)
The items are roughly ordered by increasing age, so you need to read only the first parts
if you've been using snapshots newer than 1.40.

· The signature statement no longer overrides the method found by command parsers -- now
you must provide the "override" keyword if you want that. There are new signature
methods "xml" and "xml-space". The "c_compilation_md5" signature can now also be
invoked as "C" (because signatures pertain to files, not actions). It (and its
subclasses) can now easily be extended to other suffixes as in "C.ipp,tpp" meaning
that besides the built in suffixes it will also apply to files ending in .ipp or .tpp.
Thanks to this makeppreplay and embedded SQL/C now works more reliably. Beware: this
is not understood by older versions. So don't call an older mpp on things built with
this version, which includes from a repository you built in.

· The keyword "global" can precede the "build_cache", "build_check" and "signature"
statements and the "define" statement which now also allows "export". Therefore s_
subs now get a 4th parameter, a hash reference with the encountered keywords as keys.

· Makefiles are now parsed with the same priority as in gmake. Hence "include :" or
"include =" are now statements (no space: still rule or assignment.) This means that
"perl { qualified::name }" no longer mysteriously disapears (it used to be a useless
rule.) Now variable names may contain whitespace. This means that "&preprocess
--assignment" will treat just about any equal sign as an assignment (replace them with
$E from the funny assignment "E==".)

· If you have a federated build cache over several disks, and some of them are
preferred, you must edit their build_cache_options.pl and change PREFERRED to
xPREFERRED. (This reflects a general change in names where we now prefix by 'x' all
xATTRIBUTES which are are true iff they exist).

· The "VPATH" variable and "vpath" statement are now emulated.

· Makefile functions ("sub f_...") may now get their 1st parameter as a string
reference. In that case you are responsible for expanding your arguments. Use the
accessor functions &arg or "args" described in makepp extensions. Until you get round
to updating your functions, you can turn this off by setting
"$Mpp::Makefile::legacy_functions = 1" either in your makefile (one per build system
is enough, as it's a Perl variable) or patch it into your new makepp installation. If
you want your updated functions to work with both your old and this new makepp, use
"ref $_[0] ? &arg : $_[0]" or "ref $_[0] ? args(...) : $_[0]" in the transition phase.

Within "$(call)", the special variables "$0, $1, ..., $(11), ..." are now expanded
like any other make variable. This causes slight differences to the previous work
around. The result is closer to gmake, at least if "makepp_simple_concatenation=1" is
set.

· CMake generated makefiles no longer lead to deep recursion.

· New scanner "esql_compilation" for embedded SQL C, now covers all databases. You must
supply the rules, however.

· New option --hybrid-recursive-make (follow each option link, to see shorter forms) as
a smarter alternative to --traditional-recursive-make.

New option --stop-after-loading gives makepp a headstart while you're still editing.

New options --rm-stale, --sandbox and --dont-read, for sandbox control when running
multiple concurrent (possibly distributed) makepp commands.

Makepp will now also look for options in files called .makepprc. The option
--args-file is now consistently available on all commands.

The environment variable MAKEPP_CASE_SENSITIVE_FILENAMES supercedes the options
--case-sensitive-filenames and --no-case-sensitive-filenames.

Removed "--keep-repository-links" option, the behaviour of which is now the default.

All utilities now also query an environment variable for presetting options. Each one
is called like the utility in upper case, with FLAGS added, e.g. $MAKEPPCLEANFLAGS or
$MAKEPPLOGFLAGS.

Short command line options may now be grouped in the Unix way, so "-k -j 4" may be
given as "-kj4". In all long options the dash between words may now consistently be
omitted or replaced with an underscore, so that "--no-log" can be "--nolog" or
"--no_log". Unknown options now cause an error.

· Originally "makeppclean" "-l" meant "--leave-src-info", but now the options have been
extended and this one changed to "-k|--keep-src-info".

· Scanning terminology has been cleaned up (and the page rewritten) to finally match a
redesign that happened a few years ago. There are now 3 separate terms, the lexer
(which users don't need to worry about), the (command) parsers and the (file)
scanners.

For advanced users: The new interface consists of the "register_parser" or
"register_command_parser" statements, the ":parser" rule option and the "p_*" parser
factory functions which get aliased to their parser class as "factory". The misnamed
"register_scanner" statement, ":scanner" rule option and ":scanner_*" or ":parser_*"
functions are deprecated.

· New variable MAKEPP_VERSION.

· All internal classes have been moved to the new package "Mpp::" so as to abide by CPAN
rules, and to avoid potential collision with any module you might load into your
makefiles. This is transparent to casual users of makepp.

In case you did Perl programming for your makefiles, and you made use of some
internals this would break your build. Therefore there is a temporary backward
compatibility feature, to be removed in the future, which you can activate during
installation. The new environment variable $MAKEPP_INSTALL_OLD_MODULES is checked for
a list of old modules you want created as wrappers around the new ones. Additionally
if you have makefiles you can't quickly change, which rely on these things being
available without a "use" statement, you must prefix those modules with a "+", to get
them preloaded:

MAKEPP_INSTALL_OLD_MODULES='+Glob Rule +MakeEvent'

· New makeppreplay, mppr utility to repeat some of makepp's actions very fast. New
makepplog, mppl utility to see the log data readably, needed due to a changed file
format. New makeppgraph, mppg utility to graphically analyze dependencies, includes
and partially the reasons for a rebuild. New makeppinfo, mppi utility to see somewhat
cryptically what makepp knows about some file.

· Ported to IBM z/OS Unix System Services. Only smart recursive make doesn't work.

· Makepp has become noticeably faster.

· Abolish the undocumented fancy renaming of only '.' to '_dot_' in variable and
function names.

· New variable $/ for portable directory separator. Lots of Windows fixes, including
"-j" (parallel builds) for Cygwin and MinGW and smart recursive builds on Cygwin.

· Also install abbreviations consisting of 'mpp' plus the first letter of every
following word, e.g. 'mppc' for makeppclean.

· New `:build_check only_action' for commands that don't depend on the contents of their
dependencies, like symlink creation, where it is used automatically.

· Removed "--norc-substitution" and "--percent-subdirs" and "$(rc_substitution)" and
"percent_subdirs". They are now to be given anywhere from target specific assignment
to command line or environment vars "makepp_simple_concatenation" and
"makepp_percent_subdirs".

· New action syntax "&perl_function 'arg 1' arg2 ..." and "&external-perl-script 'arg 1'
arg2 ..." New Perl function "run".

There are the following builtin commands: &chmod, &cp, &cut, &echo, &expr, &grep,
&install, &ln, &mkdir, &mv, &perl, &preprocess, &printf, &rm, &sed, &sort, &template,
&touch, &uninstall, &uniq and &yes, which can replace Unix commands of the same name,
and more or less also the following: "awk", "chgrp", "chown", "head", "m4", "rmdir",
"tail" and "tr". They are also available stand-alone from the Shell. They can also
be used as functions, e.g. "$(&cat file)", or as statements, or standalone.

Note that, unlike earlier CVS versions, "&cut -f", "&grep -v" and "&sort -r" now
behave as in Unix. Note that in earlier CVS versions of &template "@@" was processed
before "@", but now lines are consistently handled front to back.

· Added a "global" statement for sharing variables across makefiles. The assignment
variant of "export" now works like a normal assignment, so you may have to change to
":=". Added the "override" modifier to assignments. The "define var :=" statement
now optionally allows specifying the kind of assignment. And the forms with immediate
evaluation retain the newlines in "$(shell ...)" or "$(&command)". There are new
assignment operators "&=" for prepending, and ";=" which is a "=" when set, but
automatically turns into a ":=" when first used.

· A makefile is now also found if it is called "Makeppfile.mk".

· There are two new possible filenames for makefiles: "RootMakeppfile" or equivalently
"RootMakeppfile.mk". The presence of either of these gives your build tree a formal
root, accessible through the new variable "$(ROOT)". The advantage is that this file
is always loaded first, if present, allowing you to more easily create a build system
where makepp can be called from anywhere, without telling it which makefile to start
at.

The root of the file system is then automatically marked for "--dont-build", so that
makepp doesn't go messing into other directories you include or use libs from, just
because they happen to have a Makefile or sources.

Usually this means that the root of your build system gets marked for "--do-build".
If, however, you say "--do-build" for something under your build system root, which
doesn't inherit "--dont-build", then instead your build system root gets marked for
"--dont-build".

· Removed command "makeppclient" since we never managed to let builds start
significantly faster. The option "--stop-after-loading" is more beneficial.

· Interface definition files for SWIG (.i files) are now scanned for includes. Makepp
now understands swig invocations. (SWIG stands for Simplified Wrapper and Interface
Generator. It automatically generates all the wrapper functions to link your C or C++
code to a variety of other languages such as Perl, Python, Tcl, Ruby, OCaml, C#, etc.
See http://www.swig.org/.)

· GNU Emacs 22 now has a standard makefile-makepp-mode, which is the default when
visiting Makeppfile.

· $[VARIABLE] or $[function ...] is evaluated when reading a makefile line, so the
variable may contain makepp syntax.

· $( ...) is now always a list in rc-style substitution, so that "-I$( $(DIRLIST))" will
leave no lonely option when DIRLIST is empty.

· You can now double-paren functions and multi-line lists, allowing things like
"$((perl if( $a < 5 ) { ... }))".

· New "c_compilation_md5" signature, which also allows adding whitespace where there was
none and inversely. It also ignores whitespace and comments after the last token.
This is useful for preventing a useless rebuild if your VC adds lines at a "$""Log$"
tag when checking in.

· Implement $? exactly as GNU make does. New long name "$(changed_inputs)" for it.

· Implement "$(error ...)" and "$(warning ...)" as in GNU make.

· New method ": build_check ignore_action" to ignore changes to the action string.

· New statements "ifperl", "ifmakeperl", "iftrue", "ifntrue", "ifsys" and "ifnsys".

· Conditionals "ifxxx" may now be grouped with "and" and "or". When written on the same
line after "else", they create a branch of the same statement, rather than requiring
nesting.

· Added support for dependencies on environment variables, using the ":env" rule option.

· Various signal handling fixes.

· New command "makeppclean" that efficiently removes generated files without loading
makefiles.

· Ported to MinGW.

· New build caches, to cache files that are identical. This means that if you change a
file and revert, then you can have makepp drop back to the immediately preceding .o
file without rebuilding. Or you can share builds of identical files between separate
source trees. Newly added grouping of build caches for big setups, possibly spanning
several machines.

· At least Perl 5.6 is required.

Version 1.40 (December 2004)
Thanks to Anders Johnson and Daniel Pfeiffer for major contributions of code to this
release.

· Too many bug fixes to list individually. Probably the most salient fixes are to make
it work significantly more reliably on Cygwin, but there were also fixes to variable
expansion, scanning, repositories, etc.

· Rewritten command parser and file scanner architecture so that it is more easily
extensible. Makepp now supports Verilog (a language used for chip design) in addition
to C++ and Fortran. It should be relatively straightforward to support additional
languages. (Anders Johnson)

· New command "makeppclient" that lets builds start faster. (Daniel Pfeiffer)

· If you have Perl 5.6.0 or higher, HTML documentation now comes with the new working
camel logo and syntax highlighting in the examples. (Daniel Pfeiffer)

· Numerous corrections and improvements to the documentation. (Mostly Anders Johnson)

· Support for GNU make's "define" statement to define multi-line variable values.

· $(PWD) and $(CURDIR) now work as in GNU make.

· New "--keep-repository-links" option to prevent makepp from deleting all the soft
links it creates when making repositories.

· New "--assume-old", "--assume-new", and "--dont-build" options, and support for the
"-n" option.

· Support for double colon rules has slightly improved, so that we can handle makefiles
produced by MakeMaker without much trouble.

· Added syntax for performing Perl code as a statement and in rules "perl { ... }" or
"makeperl { ... }". Added functions for evaluating Perl statements "$(perl ... )" or
"$(makeperl ... )". Added statement "makesub { ... }". (Daniel Pfeiffer)

· Short options can now be directly followed by argument as in -j4. Documented options
--jobs, --keep-going, --makefile, --what-if, --assume-new, --new-file, --assume-old &
--old-file are now really accepted. (Daniel Pfeiffer)

Version 1.19 (July 2003)
Special thanks to Matthew Lovell and Chris van Engelen for lots of suggestions and
tracking down problems in the code.

· Documentation was reorganized so that man pages as well as HTML pages can be produced,
and a cookbook/FAQ was added (see makepp_cookbook).

· A "configure" script was added so installation is more like other software products
from the user point of view.

· The "$(origin )" function from GNU make is now supported.

· Target-specific variables are now supported as in GNU make, except that they do not
propagate their values to dependencies.

· New functions "$(find_upwards )" and "$(relative_filename )" (contributed by Matthew
Lovell) and "$(relative_to )".

· In compilation commands, "-I dir" and "-L dir" are now supported and work just like
"-Idir" and "-Ldir".

· Recompilation of C files will now occur if a multi-line comment was inserted, or if
the line numbering changed in any way. Previously it ignored newlines in computing
the checksum, which meant that a change that affected debugger info might not force a
recompilation.

· A bug in "$(shell )" which caused it to return a null string occasionally (especially
when the system was heavily loaded) was fixed.

· Unreadable files or directories suppress importing from repositories but are not
matched by wildcards.

· A few other minor bugs were fixed.

Version 1.18 (January 2002)
The most important change was support for the Cygwin build environment. You can now run
makepp with the Cygwin version of Perl; I do not think it will work properly with the
native Windows version of Perl yet.

A few other bug fixes went into this release.

Version 1.10 (February 2001)
The most important change in this version is that makepp can accept a vastly larger number
of makefiles without any command line options because of some changes to the
implementation of recursive make. There are a few minor improvements in the GNU make
compatibility, and a slight improvement in memory usage.

There are several user visible changes:

· "c_compilation_md5" is now the default signature method. This means that by default,
makepp won't recompile C/C++ modules if only whitespace or comments have changed.

· A new signature method "md5" has been added, which runs an MD5 checksum on the file's
contents. This is not enabled by default; makepp still uses its original method
("exact_match") for any files other than C/C++ source files.

Because of these changes, makepp will recompile everything the first time you run it.

Version 1.05
In addition to bug-fixes, this version has one user-visible change. The
"--norc-substitution" command line option was introduced to allow compatible handling of
whitespace in makefiles.

Version 0.99 (January 2001)
In addition to numerous bug fixes, this version has several user-visible changes:

· Multiple targets for a rule are now treated in a way which is more compatible with old
makefiles. Makepp has a heuristic algorithm for guessing whether the rule is supposed
to build all targets at once or whether the rule needs to be invoked multiple times.
I do not think this will break any existing makefiles, but it should allow makepp to
work with many more makefiles designed for Unix make.

· The "--traditional-recursive-make" option can be used for legacy makefiles which use
recursive invocations of make in a way that didn't work with makepp's default
implementation.

· Repositories now work with libtool.

· Variable settings are now allowed with the "load_makefile" statement and with
recursive make.

Version 0.95
This version has several user-visible changes:

· A tutorial on writing makefiles for makepp has been added.

· GNU make style conditionals (ifeq/ifneq/ifdef/ifndef) are now supported, as is the
"$(if )" function.

· By default, the "%" wildcard now matches only files within a directory; "%.c" is now
equivalent to "*.c", not "**/*.c". The reason for this change was that rules almost
never need to use the more complicated wildcard, and it often caused unnecessary
directories to be searched. You can get the old behavior by specifying
"--percent-subdirs" on the command line. (I'm curious how people feel about this
change. Please let me know if you have good reasons for it being one way or the
other.)

· By default, makefiles from any directory that contains a dependency, or that is
searched by a wildcard, are loaded automatically. Usually this means you don't need
any "load_makefile" statements at all. If this causes you problems, you can turn off
implicit loading of makefiles by adding "--no-implicit-load" to the command line.
(I'm curious whether people like or dislike implicit loading of makefiles.)

· A target may now be declared phony on the same line that defines the target by using
the new "$(phony )" function, like this:

$(phony all): program_1 program_2

The "$(phony )" function simply returns its arguments, but marks them as phony
targets. You can still use the older syntax that looks like this:

all: program_1 program_2

.PHONY: all

The "$(phony )" function is an attempt to improve the readability of makefiles. I'd
welcome other suggestions, as I'm still not entirely happy with the syntax.

Version 0.90
In order to support features like parallel make, most of the internals had to be
reorganized or rewritten. The result is much cleaner and hopefully more reliable.

Bugs too numerous to mention have been fixed. In order to help ensure reliability, a test
suite has been developed. It doesn't test absolutely everything yet, but it does test
most things, and I hope to make it more extensive in the future. You can run it by typing
"makepp test" in the makepp distribution directory. If an unmodified makepp fails the
test suite, please let me know so I can fix it.

There are many new features:

· Repositories are now supported.

· It is now possible to specify different methods for calculating and comparing file
signatures. For example, you can use an MD5 checksum ignoring comments and
whitespace, or you can require merely that the target be newer than the dependencies
(the method that the traditional make uses).

· Makefiles are only rebuilt if they are older than their dependencies; a different
signature method is used in this special case.

· Parallel builds are now supported, though this is still an experimental feature. See
the "-j" option.

· It is now possible to write your own functions. See the "sub" statement and
makepp_extending for details.

· Filenames with characters like colon or space are now supported with a new quoting
syntax.

· Synonymous, less cryptic names for automatic variables have been introduced to
encourage more readable makefiles.

· Makepp now remembers the architecture of the machine you built on, and rebuilds if the
architecture is different.

· Directories can now be targets or dependencies; a previous restriction that all
directories had to exist before the start of the build has been lifted.

· Makepp now writes a log file called ".makepp_log" explaining why it rebuilt
everything. This is extremely useful for debugging.

· The usual "-k" option for continuing to build even when an error occurs is now
supported.

· The documentation has been reorganized and extended.

There are also (unfortunately) a few incompatibilities with previous versions:

· The file format for storing information about the last build has changed. Thus makepp
will insist on rebuilding everything the first time you run the new version.

· load_makefile no longer supports targets or variable settings. It now supports
loading a list of makefiles rather than just one, so the "-F" switch is now
unnecessary (and no longer documented).

· Recursive make now ignores variable settings on the command line. This is necessary
to load makefiles in a consistent way.

· "$(INFERRED_OBJS)" is no longer supported (since it was not a well-designed interface
anyway). Use the newer "$(infer_objects)" function instead.

· $_ is no longer supported. Use "$(foreach)" instead.

· A few seldom used GNU make options such as "-s", "-n", and "-q" are no longer
supported due to internal architecture changes. "-n" will probably be supported again
in future releases.

· A man page is no longer provided since the documentation is no longer written in the
Perl pod format. Use the HTML documentation instead.

· The automatic clean target is no longer supported. A better way to do it is with
"$(only_targets)".

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