From: Mark Probert <probertm@...>
Date: 2005-04-01T08:34:36+09:00
Subject: Re: rake help

Hi .. 

Many thanks, Jim.  First, Rake is excellent!  There is one part of the 
scenario that I'd like to explore, and a comment.

 On Thursday 31 March 2005 14:48, Jim Weirich wrote:
> 
> rule '.cpp' => '.h' do |t|
>   sh "cxxtest.pl -o #{t.name} #{t.source}"
> end

I did get around to reading more of the documentation and have ended up using 
rules.  My results where very similar to yours.

When I created th.h -> .cpp rule, it would run against all .h files that it 
could find, rather than just the unit test ones.  So I ended up with:

  UT_EXE  = [ "test1", "test2", "test3" ]  # all have a .h file defining tests

  rule '.cpp' => ['.h'] do |t|
    name = t.name.sub(/\.[^.]+$/, "")
    if UT_EXE.include?(name)
        sh( "#{CXXTEST} #{CXXTESTOPT} -o #{t.name} #{t.source}" )
    end
  end

I have also found that it is useful to have a dependency list for the various 
UTs, as not all of the UTs required all of the files of the application.  So, 
something like the following works:

  UT_T1_DEP = [ "test1.cpp", "foo.o" ]
  UT_T2_DEP = [ "test2.cpp", "bar.o" ]
  UT_T3_DEP = [ "test3.cpp", "foo.o", "bar.o" ] 

My UT drivers look like:

  file "test1" => UT_T1_DEP do |t|
    sh( "#{CC} #{CCOPT} -o #{t.name} #{t.prerequisites.join(' ')}" )
  end

  file "test2" => UT_T2_DEP do |t|
    sh( "#{CC} #{CCOPT} -o #{t.name} #{t.prerequisites.join(' ')}" )
  end

  file "test3" => UT_T3_DEP do |t|
    sh( "#{CC} #{CCOPT} -o #{t.name} #{t.prerequisites.join(' ')}" )
  end

And the overall driver is a task:

  task :testsuite => UT_EXE do |t|
    puts "--> finished creating the tests"
  end

The first question:  is there a way to factor the UT drivers into a rule?  I 
can't seem to get the dependcies right.

Second:  What is the best way of making this work in a sub-directory?  Use 
explicit paths in the UT_*_DEP lines to ensure the link is right?  Have a 
Rakefile in the UT director driven by one in the main directory?

Again, many thanks for an excellent tool!  I have been playing with Make and 
Jam for ages, and Rake has the potential to replace them all for me :-)

Have you thought of doing the equivalent of Jambase and having a packaged 
library of default rules that will be applied, based on the platform that 
Rake is invoked on?  So, if Linux, CC=gcc, if Win32 CC=cl, etc..

Regards,

-- 
-mark.  (probertm at acm dot org)