Build¶

Overview¶

Install a C build toolchain:

sudo ./installc

The installer uses the system’s package manager.

Tip

Use sudo ./installc -r to remove the installed packages again.

Detect the build configuration:

./configure

Build Para:

make

See below for details.

Configuration¶

The build configuration is stored in the Makefile.

The Makefile is generated from Makefile.in by ./configure, which replaces defaults with values more appropriate to the system.

The configuration detected by ./configure is saved to config.status, the output of feature detection tests to config.log. config.status is a shell script that rebuilds the Makefile using the most recently detected configuration.

Configure is controlled by:

A configuration file (see Files below)
The environment (see Environment below)
Arguments (see Arguments below)

Para does not use Autoconf; configure and its configuration files are hand-written shell scripts; so you can debug them if you need to. The same goes for the Makefile. However, be careful to edit Makefile.in, the template from which the Makefile is generated, not the Makefile itself, or else your changes may get overwritten.

Configure conforms to the GNU Coding Standards (chap. 7).

Files¶

Para ships with three build configurations, which can be found in the conf directory.

Filename	Purpose
`prodrc`	Production
`develrc`	Development
`posixrc`	Fallback

Use prodrc for production and develrc for development.

posixrc only tests for compiler flags that are either required by some compilers or defined by POSIX.1-2008 and disables features that require non-standard interfaces. It is intended as a fallback if Para does not compile with the production build configuration.

For example,

./configure --conf=posixrc

selects conf/posixrc.

Site-specific settings can be put in .configrc, which is always loaded.

Tip

You can create a separate development configuration with:

./configure --devel --makefile=devel.mk

And use that configuration with:

make -f devel.mk

Macros¶

Macro	Type [1]	Default	Description
`COV`	bool	0	Build for coverage reports?
`DEF_GRACE`	double	120	Default for `-g`
`DEF_LOAD`	double	2.0	Default for `-l` [2]
`DEF_NJOBS`	ptrdiff_t	2	Default for `-j` [2]
`DEF_TIMEOUT`	unsigned int	0	Default for `-t`
`HAVE_GETLOADAVG`	bool	0 [3]	Is `getloadavg()` available?
`NAUTOTESTS`	bool	0	Disable auto-generated tests?
`NDEBUG`	bool	1 [4]	Disable assertions?
`NEXTENSIONS`	bool	0 [5]	Disable non-standard features?
`LINT`	bool	0	Analyzed by linter?
`MAX_NJOBS`	ptrdiff_t	64	Maximum for `-j` [6]
`MAX_NVARS`	ptrdiff_t	256	Maximum number of environment variables [6]
`MAX_STR_SIZE`	size_t	8192	Maximum string length [6]
`PARA_C_AS_HDR`	bool	0	Include `para.c` as header? [7]
`PARA_C_AS_OBJ`	bool	0	Compile `para.c` as object? [7]

Use configure’s -D flag to set macros. For example,

./configure -DMAX_NJOBS=256

configures Para to permit running up to 255 jobs in parallel (one slot is needed for a terminator).

Environment¶

configure respects the following standard environment variables:

Variable	Purpose
CC	C compiler
CPPFLAGS	Flags for the C preprocessor
CFLAGS	Flags for the C compiler
LDFLAGS	Flags for the linker
LDLIBS	Libraries to link against
DESTDIR	Destination directory for staged installations
PREFIX	Installation directory prefix

Arguments¶

See the GNU Coding Standards (chap. 7). However, different to Autoconf, unrecognised options are passed on to the C compiler if the compiler supports them.

Makefile targets¶

The Makefile conforms to the GNU Coding Standards and supports the following ‘phony’ targets:

Target	Description
all	Alias for “para” and the default target.
tidy	Delete backups, logs, and temporary files.
mostlyclean	make tidy and delete binaries, coverage data, and objects.
clean	make mostlyclean and delete coverage info.
mrproper	make clean and delete caches, tags, and tarballs.
distclean	make mrproper and delete the build configuration.
maintainer-clean	make distclean and delete X macros and some documentation.
dist	Make a distribution tarball.
distcheck	Run make check lint installcheck from a tarball.
install	Install Para.
installcheck	Check whether make install works.
uninstall	Uninstall Para.

Troubleshooting¶

configure fails¶

Try the POSIX build configuration (see Files above). If that, too, fails re-direct the output of configure to config.mk to save the configuration that is detected:

./configure >config.mk

Then copy Makefile.in to Makefile, but uncomment the line #include config.mk:

sed 's/#\(include config.mk\)/\1/' Makefile.in >Makefile

Makefile updates¶

The GNU Coding Standards mandate that the Makefile be updated whenever one of the files it depends on changes. Rename or remove config.status to disable this behaviour.

Manual compilation¶

If all else fails, compile para.c manually:

c99 -DNDEBUG -O1 -opara para.c