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Some &CDL; properties describe the consequences of manipulating

configuration options. There are two main types of consequences.

Typically enabling a configuration option results in one or more

#define's in a configuration header file, and

properties that affect this include &define;, &define-proc; and

&no-define;. Enabling a configuration option can also affect the build

process, primarily determining which files get built and added to the

appropriate library. Properties related to the build process include

&compile; and &make;. This chapter describes the whole build process,

including details such as compiler flags and custom build steps.

Part of the overall design of the &eCos; component framework is that

it can interact with a number of different build systems. The most

obvious of these is GNU

make:the component framework can generate one or more

makefiles, and the user can then build the various packages simply by

invoking make. However it

should also be possible to build &eCos; by other means: the

component framework can be queried about what is involved in building

a given configuration, and this information can then be fed into the

desired build system. Component writers should be aware of this

possibility. Most packages will not be affected because the &compile;

property can be used to provide all the required information, but care

has to be taken when writing custom build steps.

It is necessary to create an &eCos; configuration before anything can

be built. With some tools such as the graphical configuration tool

this configuration will be created in memory, and it is not essential

to produce an ecos.ecc savefile first (although

it is still very desirable to generate such a savefile at some point,

to allow the configuration to be re-loaded later on). With other tools

the savefile is generated first, for example using

ecosconfig new, and then a build tree is

generated using ecosconfig tree. The savefile

contains all the information needed to recreate a configuration.

An &eCos; build actually involves three separate trees. The component

repository acts as the source tree, and for application developers

this should be considered a read-only resource. The build tree is

where all intermediate files, especially object files, are created.

The install tree is where the main library

libtarget.a, the exported header files, and

similar files end up. Following a successful build it is possible to

take just the install tree and use it for developing an application:

none of the files in the component repository or the build tree are

needed for that. The build tree will be needed again only if the user

changes the configuration. However the install tree does not contain

copies of all of the documentation for the various packages, instead

the documentation is kept only in the component repository.

By default the build tree, the install tree, and the

ecos.ecc savefile all reside in the same

directory tree. This is not a requirement, both the install tree and

the savefile can be anywhere in the file system.

It is worth noting that the component framework does not separate the

usual make and make install

stages. A build always populates the install tree, and any

make install step would be redundant.

The install tree will always begin with two directories, 

class="directory">include for the exported header files and

lib for the main library

libtarget.a and other files

such as the linker script. In addition there will be a subdirectory

include/pkgconf containing the

configuration header files, which are generated or updated at the same

time the build tree is created or updated. More details of header file

generation are given below. Additional 

class="directory">include subdirectories such as 

class="directory">sys and 

class="directory">cyg/kernel will be created during the

first build, when each package's exported header files are copied to

the install tree. The install tree may also end up with additional

subdirectories during a build, for example as a result of custom build

steps.

The component framework does not define the structure of the build

tree, and this may vary between build systems. It can be assumed that

each package in the configuration will have its own directory in the

build tree, and that this directory will be used for storing the

package's object files and as the current directory for any build

steps for that package. This avoids problems when custom build steps

from different packages generate intermediate files which happen to

have the same name.

Some build systems may allow application developers to copy a source

file from the component repository to the build tree and edit the

copy. This allows users to experiment with small changes, for example

to add a couple of lines of debugging to a package, without having to

modify the master copy in the component repository which could be

shared by several projects or several people. Functionality such as

this is transparent to component writers, and it is the responsibility

of the build system to make sure that the right thing happens.

There are some unresolved issues related to the build tree and install

tree. Specifically, when updating an existing build or install tree,

what should happen to unexpected files or directories? Suppose the

user started with a configuration that included the math library, and

the install tree contains header files 

class="headerfile">include/math.h and 

class="headerfile">include/sys/ieeefp.h. The user then removed

the math library from the configuration and is updating the build

tree. It is now desirable to remove these header files from the

install tree, so that if any application code still attempts to use

the math library this will fail at compile time rather than at link

time. There will also be some object files in the existing

libtarget.a library which are no longer

appropriate, and there may be other files in the install tree as a

result of custom build steps. The build tree will still contain a

directory for the math library, which no longer serves any purpose.

However, it is also possible that some of the files in the build tree

or the install tree were placed there by the user, in which case

removing them automatically would be a bad idea.

At present the component framework does not keep track of exactly what

should be present in the build and install trees, so it cannot readily

determine which files or library members are obsolete and can safely

be removed, and which ones are unexpected and need to be reported to

the user. This will be addressed in a future release of the system.

Configuration options can affect a build in two main ways. First,

enabling a configuration option or other &CDL; entity can result in

various files being built and added to a library, thus providing

functionality to the application code. However this mechanism can only

operate at a rather coarse grain, at the level of entire source files.

Hence the component framework also generates configuration header

files containing mainly C preprocessor #define

directives. Package source code can then #include

the appropriate header files and use #if,

#ifdef and #ifndef directives to

adapt accordingly. In this way configuration options can be used to

enable or disable entire functions within a source file or just a

single line, whichever is appropriate.

The configuration header files end up in the 

class="directory">include/pkgconf subdirectory of the

install tree. There will be one header file for the system as a whole,

pkgconf/system.h, and there will

be additional header files for each package, for example

pkgconf/kernel.h. The header files

are generated when creating or updating the build and install trees,

which needs to happen after every change to the configuration.

The component framework processes each package in the configuration

one at a time. The exact order in which the packages are processed is

not defined, so the order in which #define's will

end up in the global 

class="headerfile">pkgconf/system.h header may vary. However

for any given configuration the order should remain consistent until

packages are added to or removed from the system. This avoids

unnecessary changes to the global header file and hence unnecessary

rebuilds of the packages and of application code because of header

file dependency handling.

Within a given package the various components, options and interfaces

will be processed in the order in which they were defined in the

corresponding &CDL; scripts. Typically the data in the configuration

headers consists only of a sequence of #define's so

the order in which these are generated is irrelevant, but some

properties such as &define-proc; can be used to add arbitrary data to

a configuration header and hence there may be dependencies on the

order. It should be noted that re-parenting an option below some other

package has no effect on which header file will contain the

corresponding #define: the preprocessor directives

will always end up in the header file for the package that defines the

option, or in the global configuration header.

There are six properties which affect the process of generating header

files:

&define-header;,

&no-define;,

&define-format;,

&define;,

&if-define;, and

&define-proc;.

The &define-header; property can only occur in the body of a

&cdl-package; command and specifies the name of the header file which

should contain the package's configuration data, for example:

cdl_package <some_package> {

    …

    define_header xyzzy.h

}

Given such a &define-header; property the component framework will

use the file pkgconf/xyzzy.h for

the package's configuration data. If a package does not have

a &define-header; property then a suitable file name is constructed

from the package's name. This involves:

All characters in the package name up to and including the first

underscore are removed. For example CYGPKG_KERNEL

is converted to KERNEL, and

CYGPKG_HAL_ARM is converted to

HAL_ARM.

Any upper case letters in the resulting string will be converted to

lower case, yielding e.g. kernel and

hal_arm.

A .h suffix is appended, yielding e.g.

kernel.h and hal_arm.h.

Because of the naming restrictions on configuration options, this

should result in a valid filename. There is a small possibility of a

file name class, for example CYGPKG_PLUGH and

CYGPKG_plugh would both end up trying to use the

same header file pkgconf/plugh.h,

but the use of lower case letters for package names violates the

naming conventions. It is not legal to use the &define-header;

property to put the configuration data for several packages in a

single header file. The resulting behaviour is undefined.

Once the name of the package's header file has been determined and the

file has been opened, the various components, options and interfaces

in the package will be processed starting with the package itself. The

following steps are involved:

If the current option or other &CDL; entity is inactive or disabled,

the option is ignored for the purposes of header file generation.

#define's are only generated for options that are

both active and enabled.

The next step is to generate a default #define for

the current option. If this option has a &no-define; property then the

default #define is suppressed, and processing

continues for &define;, &if-define; and &define-proc; properties.

The header file appropriate for the default #define

is determined. For a &cdl-package; this will be 

class="headerfile">pkgconf/system.h, for any other option this

will be the package's own header file. The intention here is that

packages and application code can always determine which packages are

in the configuration by #include'ing 

class="headerfile">pkgconf/system.h. The C preprocessor lacks

any facilities for including a header file only if it exists, and

taking appropriate action otherwise.

For options with the flavors bool or

none, a single #define will be

generated. This takes the form:

#define <option> 1

For example:

#define CYGFUN_LIBC_TIME_POSIX 1

Package source code can check whether or not an option is active and

enabled by using the #ifdef,

#ifndef or #if

defined(…)directives.

For options with the flavors data or

booldata, either one or two

#define's will be generated. The first of these may

be affected by a &define-format; property. If this property is not

defined then the first #define will take the form:

#define <option> <value>

For example:

#define CYGNUM_LIBC_ATEXIT_HANDLERS 32

Package source code can examine this value using the

#if directive, or by using the symbol in

code such as:

    for (i = 0; i < CYGNUM_LIBC_ATEXIT_HANDLERS; i++) {

        …

    }

It must be noted that the #define will be generated

only if the corresponding option is both active and enabled. Options

with the data flavor are always enabled but may not

be active. Code like the above should be written only if it is known

that the symbol will always be defined, for example if the

corresponding source file will only get built if the containing

component is active and enabled. Otherwise the use of additional

#ifdef or similar directives will be necessary.

If there is a &define-format; property then this controls how the

option's value will appear in the header file. Given a format string

such as %08x and a value 42, the component

framework will execute the &Tcl; command

format %08x 42 and the result will be

used for the #define's value. It is the

responsibility of the component writer to make sure that this &Tcl;

command will be valid given the format string and the legal values for

the option.

In addition a second #define may or may not be

generated. This will take the form:

#define <option>_<value>

For example:

#define CYGNUM_LIBC_ATEXIT_HANDLERS_32

The #define will be generated only if it would

result in a valid C preprocessor symbol. If the value is a string such

as "/dev/ser0" then the #define

would be suppressed. This second #define is not

particularly useful for numerical data, but can be valuable in other

circumstances. For example if the legal values for an option

XXX_COLOR are red,

green and blue then code like

the following can be used:

#ifdef XXX_COLOR_red

    …

#endif

#ifdef XXX_COLOR_green

    …

#endif

#ifdef XXX_COLOR_blue

    …

#endif

The expression syntax provided by the C preprocessor is limited to

numerical data and cannot perform string comparisons. By generating

two #define's in this way it is possible to work

around this limitation of the C preprocessor. However some care has to

be taken: if a component writer also defined a configuration option

XXX_COLOR_green then there will be confusion. Since

such a configuration option violates the naming conventions, the

problem is unlikely to arise in practice.

For some options it may be useful to generate one or more additional

#define's or, in conjunction with the &no-define;

property, to define a symbol with a name different from the option's

name. This can be achieved with the &define; property, which takes the

following form:

    define [-file=<filename>] [-format=<format>] <symbol>

For example:

    define FOPEN_MAX

This will result in something like:

#define FOPEN_MAX 8

#define FOPEN_MAX_8

The specified symbol must be a valid C preprocessor symbol. Normally

the #define will end up in the same header file as

the default one, in other words 

class="headerfile">pkgconf/system.h in the case of a

&cdl-package;, or the package's own header file for any other option.

The -file option can be used to change this. At

present the only legal value is system.h, for

example:

    define -file=system.h <symbol>

This will cause the #define to end up in the global

configuration header rather than in the package's own header. Use of

this facility should be avoided since it is very rarely necessary to

make options globally visible.

The &define; property takes another option,

-format, to provide a format string.

    define -format=%08x <symbol>

This should only be used for options with the data

or booldata flavor, and has the same effect as the

&define-format; property has on the default

#define.

&define; properties are processed in the same way the default

#define. For options with the

bool or none flavors a single

#define will be generated using the value

1. For options with the data or

booldata flavors either one or two

#define's will be generated.

After processing all &define; properties, the component framework will

look for any &if-define; properties. These take the following form:

    if_define [-file=<filename>] <symbol1> <symbol2>

For example:

    if_define CYGSRC_KERNEL CYGDBG_USE_ASSERTS

The following will be generated in the configuration header file:

#ifdef CYGSRC_KERNEL

# define CYGDBG_USE_ASSERTS

#endif

Typical kernel source code would begin with the following construct:

#define CYGSRC_KERNEL 1

#include <pkgconf/kernel.h>

#include <cyg/infra/cyg_ass.h>

The infrastructure header file 

class="headerfile">cyg/infra/cyg_ass.h only checks for symbols

such as CYGDBG_USE_ASSERTS, and has no special

knowledge of the kernel or any other package. The &if-define; property

will only affect code that defines the symbol

CYGSRC_KERNEL, so typically only kernel source

code. If the option is enabled then assertion support will be enabled

for the kernel source code only. If the option is inactive or disabled

then kernel assertions will be disabled. Assertions in other packages

are not affected. Thus the &if-define; property allows control over

assertions, tracing, and similar facilities at the level of individual

packages, or at finer levels such as components or even single source

files if desired.

Current &eCos; packages do not yet make use of this facility. Instead

there is a single global configuration option

CYGDBG_USE_ASSERTS which is used to enable or

disable assertions for all packages. This issue should be addressed in

a future release of the system.

As with the &define; property, the &if-define; property takes an

option -file with a single legal value

system.h. This allows the output to be redirected

to pkgconf/system.h if and when

necessary.

The final property that is relevant to configuration header file

generation is &define-proc;. This takes a single argument, a &Tcl;

fragment that can add arbitrary data to the global header 

class="headerfile">pkgconf/system.h and to the package's own

header. When the &define-proc; script is invoked two variables will be

set up to allow access to these headers: cdl_header

will be a channel to the package's own header file, for example

pkgconf/kernel.h;

cdl_system_header will be a channel to 

class="headerfile">pkgconf/system.h. A typical &define-proc;

script will use the &Tcl; puts command to output

data to one of these channels, for example:

cdl_option <name> {

    …

    define_proc {

        puts $::cdl_header "#define XXX 1"

    }

}

In the current implementation the use of &define-proc; is limited

because the &Tcl; script cannot access any of the configuration data.

Therefore the script is limited to writing constant data to the

configuration headers. This is a major limitation which will be

addressed in a future release of the component framework.

Generating C header files with #define's for the

configuration data suffices for existing packages written in some

combination of C, C++ and assembler. It can also be used in

conjunction with some other languages, for example by first passing

the source code through the C preprocessor and feeding the result into

the appropriate compiler. In future versions of the component

framework additional programming languages such as Java may be

supported, and the configuration data may also be written to files in

some format other than C preprocessor directives.

At present there is no way for application or package source code to

get hold of all the configuration details related to the current

hardware. Instead that information is spread over various different

configuration headers for the HAL and device driver packages, with

some of the information going into 

class="headerfile">pkgconf/system.h. It is possible that in

some future release of the system there will be another global

configuration header file 

class="headerfile">pkgconf/hardware.h which either contains the

configuration details for the various hardware-specific packages or

which #include's all the hardware-specific

configuration headers. The desirability and feasibility of such a

scheme are still to be determined. To avoid future incompatibility

problems as a result of any such changes, it is recommended that all

hardware packages (in other packages containing the &hardware;

property) use the &define-header; property to specify explicitly which

configuration header should be generated.

Typically configuration header files are #include'd

only by the package's source code at build time, or by a package's

exported header files if the interface provided by the package may be

affected by a configuration option. There should be no need for

application code to know the details of individual configuration

options, instead the configuration should specifically meet the needs

of the application.

There are always exceptions. Application code may want to adapt to

configuration options, for example to do different things for ROM and

RAM booting systems, or when it is necessary to support several

different target boards. This is especially true if the code in question

is really re-usable library code which has not been converted to an

eCos package, and hence cannot use any CDL facilities.

A major problem here is determining which packages are in the

configuration: attempting to #include a header file

such as pkgconf/net.h

when it is not known for certain that that particular package is part

of the configuration will result in compilation errors. The global

header file pkgconf/system.h

serves to provide such information, so application code can use

techniques like the following:

#include <pkgconf/system.h>

#ifdef CYGPKG_NET

# include <pkgconf/net.h>

#endif

This will compile correctly irrespective of the eCos configuration,

and subsequent code can use #ifdef or similar

directives on CYGPKG_NET or any of the

configuration options in that package.

In addition to determining whether or not a package is present, the

global configuration header file can also be used to find out the

specific version of a package that is being used. This can be useful

if a more recent version exports additional functionality. It may also

be necessary to adapt to incompatible changes in the exported

interface or to changes in behaviour. For each package the

configuration system will typically #define three

symbols, for example for a V1.3.1 release:

#define CYGNUM_NET_VERSION_MAJOR 1

#define CYGNUM_NET_VERSION_MINOR 3

#define CYGNUM_NET_VERSION_RELEASE 1

There are a number of problems associated with such version

#define's. The first restriction is that the

package must follow the standard naming conventions, so the package

name must be of the form xxxPKG_yyy. The three

characters immediately preceding the first underscore must be

PKG, and will be replaced with

NUM when generating the version

#define's. If a package does not follow the naming

convention then no version #define's will be

generated.

Assuming the package does follow the naming conventions, the

configuration tools will always generate three version

#define's for the major, minor, and release

numbers. The symbol names are obtained from the package name by

replacing PKG with NUM and

appending _VERSION_MAJOR,

_VERSION_MINOR and

_VERSION_RELEASE. It is assumed that the resulting

symbols will not clash with any configuration option names. The values

for the #define's are determined by searching the

version string for sequences of digits, optionally preceded by a minus

sign. It is possible that some or all of the numbers are absent in any

given version string, in which case -1 will be used

in the #define. For example, given a version string

of V1.12beta, the major version number is

1, the minor number is 12, and

the release number is -1. Given a version string of

beta all three numbers would be set to

-1.

There is special case code for the version current,

which typically corresponds to a development version obtained via

anonymous CVS or similar means. The configuration system has special

built-in knowledge of this version, and will assume it is more recent

than any specific release number. The global configuration header

defines a special symbol CYGNUM_VERSION_CURRENT,

and this will be used as the major version number when version

current of a package is used:

#define CYGNUM_VERSION_CURRENT 0x7fffff00

...

#define CYGNUM_INFRA_VERSION_MAJOR CYGNUM_VERSION_CURRENT

#define CYGNUM_INFRA_VERSION_MINOR -1

#define CYGNUM_INFRA_VERSION_RELEASE -1

The large number used for CYGNUM_VERSION_CURRENT

should ensure that major version comparisons work as expected, while

still allowing for a small amount of arithmetic in case that proves

useful.

It should be noted that this implementation of version

#define's will not cope with all version number

schemes. However for many cases it should suffice.

The primary goal of an eCos build is to produce the library

libtarget.a. A typical &eCos; build will also

generate a number of other targets: extras.o,

startup code vectors.o, and a linker script. Some

packages may cause additional libraries or targets to be generated.

The basic build process involves a number of different phases with

corresponding priorities. There are a number of predefined priorities:

    0

    Export header files

    100

    Process &compile; properties

    and most &make-object; custom build steps

    200

    Generate libraries

    300

    Process &make; custom build steps

Generation of the extras.o file, the startup code

and the linker script actually happens via &make; custom build steps,

typically defined in appropriate HAL packages. The component framework

has no special knowledge of these targets.

By default custom build steps for a &make-object; property happen

during the same phase as most compilations, but this can be changed

using a -priority option. Similarly custom build

steps for a &make; property happen at the end of a build, but this can

also be changed with a -priority option. For

example a priority of 50 can be used to run a custom build step

between the header file export phase and the main compilation phase.

Custom build steps are discussed in more detail below.

Some build systems may run several commands of the same priority in

parallel. For example files listed in &compile; properties may get

compiled in parallel, concurrently with &make-object; custom build

steps with default priorities. Since most of the time for an &eCos;

build involves processing &compile; properties, this allows builds to

be speeded up on suitable host hardware. All build steps for a given

phase will complete before the next phase is started.

Some build systems may involve a phase before the header files get

exported, to update the build and install trees automatically when

there has been a change to the configuration savefile

ecos.ecc. This is useful mainly for application

developers using the command line tools: it would allow users to

create the build tree only once, and after any subsequent

configuration changes the tree would be updated automatically by the

build system. The facility would be analogous to the

--enable-maintainer-mode option provide by the

autoconf and 

class="software">automake programs. At present no &eCos;