[Buildroot] Compiler errors pointing in BUILD_DIR when using OVERRIDE_SRCDIR

[Buildroot] Compiler errors pointing in BUILD_DIR when using OVERRIDE_SRCDIR

[Julien Rosener]

Hi,

In my company we are using buildroot for package development.
According to the buildroot documentation we are using the
<pkg>_OVERRIDE_SRCDIR mechanism.

It works great when the build is going well. However when there is a
compiler error/warning the issue is referring files in
output/build/<pkg> (because the source code was rsynced at this
location to be built).
From a developer point of view (which is editing source code in
<pkg>_OVERRIDE_SRCDIR), it is difficult to work because if you jump on
the error, it does not jump on the source file which is edited. This
behavior generates mistake.

What do you think about that (limitation, bug ?) ? Do you think it
would be possible to improve it ?

Julien.

[Buildroot] Compiler errors pointing in BUILD_DIR when using OVERRIDE_SRCDIR

[Arnout Vandecappelle]

On 21-10-15 15:16, Julien Rosener wrote:
> Hi,
> 
> In my company we are using buildroot for package development.
> According to the buildroot documentation we are using the
> <pkg>_OVERRIDE_SRCDIR mechanism.
> 
> It works great when the build is going well. However when there is a
> compiler error/warning the issue is referring files in
> output/build/<pkg> (because the source code was rsynced at this
> location to be built).
>>From a developer point of view (which is editing source code in
> <pkg>_OVERRIDE_SRCDIR), it is difficult to work because if you jump on
> the error, it does not jump on the source file which is edited. This
> behavior generates mistake.
> 
> What do you think about that (limitation, bug ?) ? Do you think it
> would be possible to improve it ?

 Some people (e.g., me :-) use the same source directory to build several
configurations in separate output directories. In that case, building in the
source directory wouldn't work...

 If the package in question supports out-of-tree building (like e.g. the kernel
or most autotools-based packages), it would be possible that we don't copy the
sources but instead just build out-of-tree in the build directory. Thomas
Petazzoni posted a patch series to that effect about two and a half years ago,
but that series was incomplete and never got applied. So you could take it over,
perhaps improve and repost it. See [1], but mind [2]. Also, Thomas may have a
more recent version of the series.

 Regards,
 Arnout

[1] http://lists.busybox.net/pipermail/buildroot/2013-April/070573.html
[2] http://lists.busybox.net/pipermail/buildroot/2013-May/072556.html


-- 
Arnout Vandecappelle                          arnout at mind be
Senior Embedded Software Architect            +32-16-286500
Essensium/Mind                                http://www.mind.be
G.Geenslaan 9, 3001 Leuven, Belgium           BE 872 984 063 RPR Leuven
LinkedIn profile: http://www.linkedin.com/in/arnoutvandecappelle
GPG fingerprint:  7493 020B C7E3 8618 8DEC 222C 82EB F404 F9AC 0DDF

[Buildroot] Compiler errors pointing in BUILD_DIR when using OVERRIDE_SRCDIR

[Thomas Petazzoni]

Arnout, Julien,

On Wed, 21 Oct 2015 22:26:55 +0200, Arnout Vandecappelle wrote:

> > In my company we are using buildroot for package development.
> > According to the buildroot documentation we are using the
> > <pkg>_OVERRIDE_SRCDIR mechanism.
> > 
> > It works great when the build is going well. However when there is a
> > compiler error/warning the issue is referring files in
> > output/build/<pkg> (because the source code was rsynced at this
> > location to be built).
> >>From a developer point of view (which is editing source code in
> > <pkg>_OVERRIDE_SRCDIR), it is difficult to work because if you jump on
> > the error, it does not jump on the source file which is edited. This
> > behavior generates mistake.
> > 
> > What do you think about that (limitation, bug ?) ? Do you think it
> > would be possible to improve it ?
> 
>  Some people (e.g., me :-) use the same source directory to build several
> configurations in separate output directories. In that case, building in the
> source directory wouldn't work...
> 
>  If the package in question supports out-of-tree building (like e.g. the kernel
> or most autotools-based packages), it would be possible that we don't copy the
> sources but instead just build out-of-tree in the build directory. Thomas
> Petazzoni posted a patch series to that effect about two and a half years ago,
> but that series was incomplete and never got applied. So you could take it over,
> perhaps improve and repost it. See [1], but mind [2]. Also, Thomas may have a
> more recent version of the series.

In fact, I already had a discussion with Julien about this issue (I
happen to know Julien for other reasons), and already pointed him to
the idea of doing per-package out-of-tree build. I unfortunately don't
have a more recent version of the series than what I posted a long,
long time ago.

Another option maybe is to ask rsync to create hardlinks so that
developers could edit directly the source files in output/build/<pkg>/
and in fact what gets edited are the files in the original location.
Though I agree that this is quite hackish and I'm pretty sure has lots
of nasty corner cases.

Clearly, the long-term solution to solve this problem is out of tree
build of packages.

At least, this request is great for one thing: it gives me one more
argument to push per-package out of tree build. I was wondering what to
do during my upcoming 10-11 hours flight, maybe you gave me an idea :)

Thomas
-- 
Thomas Petazzoni, CTO, Free Electrons
Embedded Linux, Kernel and Android engineering
http://free-electrons.com

[Buildroot] Compiler errors pointing in BUILD_DIR when using OVERRIDE_SRCDIR

[Julien Rosener]

Arnout, Thomas,

2015-10-21 22:51 GMT+02:00 Thomas Petazzoni
<thomas.petazzoni@free-electrons.com>:
> Clearly, the long-term solution to solve this problem is out of tree
> build of packages.
>
> At least, this request is great for one thing: it gives me one more
> argument to push per-package out of tree build. I was wondering what to
> do during my upcoming 10-11 hours flight, maybe you gave me an idea :)

Nice to hear this could give another reason to implement out of tree
build of packages :-)
I am available to help and test.

Bests,
Julien.