CMake/Tests/CustomCommand
Brad King e15a7075b5 Add an option for explicit BYPRODUCTS of custom commands (#14963)
A common idiom in CMake-based build systems is to have custom commands
that generate files not listed explicitly as outputs so that these
files do not have to be newer than the inputs.  The file modification
times of such "byproducts" are updated only when their content changes.
Then other build rules can depend on the byproducts explicitly so that
their dependents rebuild when the content of the original byproducts
really does change.

This "undeclared byproduct" approach is necessary for Makefile, VS, and
Xcode build tools because if a byproduct were listed as an output of a
rule then the rule would always rerun when the input is newer than the
byproduct but the byproduct may never be updated.

Ninja solves this problem by offering a 'restat' feature to check
whether an output was really modified after running a rule and tracking
the fact that it is up to date separately from its timestamp.  However,
Ninja also stats all dependencies up front and will only restat files
that are listed as outputs of rules with the 'restat' option enabled.
Therefore an undeclared byproduct that does not exist at the start of
the build will be considered missing and the build will fail even if
other dependencies would cause the byproduct to be available before its
dependents build.

CMake works around this limitation by adding 'phony' build rules for
custom command dependencies in the build tree that do not have any
explicit specification of what produces them.  This is not optimal
because it prevents Ninja from reporting an error when an input to a
rule really is missing.  A better approach is to allow projects to
explicitly specify the byproducts of their custom commands so that no
phony rules are needed for them.  In order to work with the non-Ninja
generators, the byproducts must be known separately from the outputs.

Add a new "BYPRODUCTS" option to the add_custom_command and
add_custom_target commands to specify byproducts explicitly.  Teach the
Ninja generator to specify byproducts as outputs of the custom commands.
In the case of POST_BUILD, PRE_LINK, and PRE_BUILD events on targets
that link, the byproducts must be specified as outputs of the link rule
that runs the commands.  Activate 'restat' for such rules so that Ninja
knows it needs to check the byproducts, but not for link rules that have
no byproducts.
2014-11-14 16:16:00 -05:00
..
GeneratedHeader Convert CMake-language commands to lower case 2012-08-13 14:19:16 -04:00
GeneratorInExtraDir Convert CMake-language commands to lower case 2012-08-13 14:19:16 -04:00
check_command_line.c.in ENH: Added quick means to turn on verbose output for debugging this test. 2007-05-18 09:18:09 -04:00
check_mark.cmake Remove CMake-language block-end command arguments 2012-08-13 14:19:16 -04:00
CMakeLists.txt Add an option for explicit BYPRODUCTS of custom commands (#14963) 2014-11-14 16:16:00 -05:00
config.h.in ENH: Added test for generation of files listed explicitly as sources but not used during the build of a target. 2006-06-01 13:01:31 -04:00
doc1.tex new test 2003-06-03 10:34:15 -04:00
foo.h.in COMP: Avoid C++ comment in C translation unit. 2005-08-18 09:21:45 -04:00
foo.in Remove trailing whitespace from most CMake and C/C++ code 2012-08-13 14:18:39 -04:00
gen_redirect_in.c BUG: Do not escape shell operators when generating command lines. 2008-04-29 15:34:49 -04:00
generator.cxx BUG: Do not escape shell operators when generating command lines. 2008-04-29 15:34:49 -04:00
main.cxx ENH: now target names can be used in add_custom_command() and 2007-05-09 08:25:45 -04:00
source_in_custom_target.cpp Generators: don't append sources from utility targets to objectSources 2013-10-28 14:25:28 +01:00
tcat.cxx BUG: Do not escape shell operators when generating command lines. 2008-04-29 15:34:49 -04:00
wrapped.h new test 2003-06-03 10:34:15 -04:00
wrapper.cxx BUG: Fix new custom command with make-var expansion test on VS6. The VS6 IDE adds some extra characters to the variable value during expansion. 2008-06-05 10:01:16 -04:00