Build

Overview

Install a C build toolchain:

sudo ./installc

The installer installs missing packages only and 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:

• Configuration files (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 and the Makefile conform 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 conf/siterc, which is always loaded and never included in a distribution.

Tip

You can create a separate development configuration with:

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

And use that configuration with:

make -f devel.mk

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.

See also

configure --help

Compile-time configuration

Some aspects of the behaviour of Para can be configured at compile-time by defining one or more of the macros below.

Macro	Type	Default	Description
COV	bool [1]	0	Build for coverage reports?
DEF_GRACE	double	0	Default for -k
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 [1]	0 [3]	Is getloadavg(3) available?
NAUTOTESTS	bool [1]	0	Disable auto-generated tests?
NDEBUG	bool [1]	1 [5]	Disable assertions?
EXTENSIONS	bool [1]	0 [6]	Enable non-standard features?
LINT	bool [1]	0	Analyzed by linter?
MAX_NJOBS	ptrdiff_t	64	Maximum for -j [7]
MAX_NVARS	ptrdiff_t	256	Maximum number of environment variables [7]
MAX_STR_SIZE	size_t	8192	Maximum string length [7]
PARA_C_AS_HDR	bool [1]	0	Include para.c as header? [8]
PARA_C_AS_OBJ	bool [1]	0	Compile para.c as object? [8]

Use configure’s -D flag to define 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).

[1] (1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8)

Use 0 for false and 1 for true.

[2] (1,2)

Overriden by the number of processors if _SC_NPROCESSORS_ONLN is available.

[3]

Detected by ./configure.

[4]

Only controls which floating-point exception tests are run.

[5]

0 when using the development build configuration.

[6]

1 when using the production or the development build configuration.

[7] (1,2,3)

Including the null terminator.

[8] (1,2)

For compiling unit tests.

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.
check	Compile and run tests.
quickcheck	Only compile and run quick tests.
lint	Run Flawfinder, RATS, Clang-Tidy and Cppcheck.
quicklint	Only run Flawfinder and RATS.
memcheck	Run Valgrind or leaks.
dist	Make a distribution tarball.
distcheck	Run make all lint check memcheck installcheck from a tarball.
install	Install Para.
installcheck	Check whether make install works.
uninstall	Uninstall Para.
tidy	Delete backups, logs, and temporary files.
mostlyclean	make tidy and delete binaries, coverage data, and objects.
clean	make mostlyclean and delete coverage reports.
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, the manual, and some documentation.

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

Known Issues

Some versions of the Public Domain Korn Shell cannot run ./configure.