CTBUILD: SRT interface

D. Adams
30nov98 2200

CTBUILD provides an interface to the SRT (SoftRelTools) environment. The usual SRT commands (gmake package.target) are used to invoke the standard CTBUILD makefile. Packages built with CTBUILD may be mixed with those built with traditional SRT GNUmakefiles and with those built with the CTEST package.

The interface requires that a CTBUILD installation be overlaid on an SRT release and that packages using CTBUILD provide a special top-level GNUmakefile.

Environment

CTBUILD makes use of two global variables: CTBUILD_DIR points to the top of the desired version of the CTBUILD package and CTINSTALL points the current installation. These are set by the SRT interface and need not be defined if one works completely within the SRT interface. It is possible to use the ctbuild command within that interface if these are defined.

See the section on switching between CTBUILD and CTEST for variables relevant to that option.

Building CTBUILD

The necessary scripts to use CTBUILD are installed with the bin target (gmake ctbuild.bin). Note that as usual for SRT, the target directory is on the user's path on if the current directory is the release directory.

Overlaying the installation

The installation is created with the script srtnewins. An installation is overlaid on an SRT test release by running this script in the SRT test release directory. CTBUILD installation directories are set to point to those used by SRT. The actual CTBUILD installation directory (i.e. the one containing setup scripts and makefiles) is two levels down in cttop/$BFARCH. This makes it possible to overlay multiple CTBUILD installations with different architectures on a single SRT release.

This script may also be run in place of the SRT newrel command. It does the newrel and then overlays a CTBUILD installation. The syntax is similar to that of newrel:

srtnewins -t REL DIR

where REL is the base release and DIR is the directory where the local release should be created. The release defaults to $BFCURRENT and the directory defaults to $REL.

The installation is done automatically when the ctbuild package is built (gmake ctbuild.all). Thus there is no need to run srtnewins if ctbuild is built locally.

Package interface

In order for a package to be built using CTBUILD inside the SRT environment, it must include the following line in its top-level GNUmakefile:

include ctbuild/srt/srt.mk

Normally no other lines are required or desired. It is not necessary for GNUmakefiles to appear in any of the package subdirectories.

It might be desirable to have SRT provide such behavior by default, i.e. if the GNUmakefile is not present. However, for the time being, it must be provided.

It may be possible to have hybrid packages where part is built by CTBUILD and part with commands in the GNUmakefile either with or without standard.mk. However, this has not been tested and should be approached with caution. It is likely that SRT standard.mk and CTBUILD will trample on one another.

Switching between CTEST and CTBUILD

It is possible to use CTBUILD to build a package which has the makefiles required by the CTEST package. This done if the environmental variable CTBUILD_REPLACES_CTEST is defined to have a non-blank value. This allows users to try out CTBUILD without modifying their packages. This is only supported in version 1.30.04 or later of CTEST.

The flag CTEST_REPLACES_CTBUILD will cause CTEST to be used in place of CTBUILD. This is intended for use with architectures not yet supported by CTBUILD.

Limitiations

Here we list some limitiations of the CTBUILD SRT interface.

The only supported architecture is IRIX6-KCC.
The only allowed external libraries are CERN and open inventor. If others are needed, let me know.

CTEST conversion notes and hints

I have switched about 30 packages from CTEST to CTBUILD. Here are some of the changes that had to be made. If you make other changes of general interest, let me know and I will add then to this list.

The top-level GNUmakefile must be modified as described above. Subdirectory makefiles are no longer needed but should probably be retained to allow the possibility of CTEST releases. If any CTEST instructions were placed in the GNUmakefile (e.g. SUBDIRS), these should be moved to the appropriate instruction file.
CTBUILD searches for the location of every requested library and the search path does not include system directories. Thus, system libraries such as m (libm.a) should not appear in LIBRARIES.
CTBUILD will only search the standard header areas when building D0OM linkage files. Local references may have to be replaced with package references, i.e. "#include pkg/x.h" instead of "#include x.h".

adams@physics.rice.edu