Track origin of file deletion during make - linux

I have a CMake project I am working on, and when I run "make" then the rebuild of one of the targets is getting triggered regardless of whether I touch any of the files in the system. I have managed to discover that this is because one of the files on which the target depends is somehow getting deleted when I run "make", so the system registers that it needs to be rebuilt. I tried setting "chattr +i" on this file to make it immutable and indeed, with this flag set, the rebuilding of the target is not triggered, though there are also no errors from a deletion attempt. But I think I can be sure that this is the culprit.
So now my question. How can I figure out what script or makefile is actually deleting this file? It is a big project with quite a few scripts and sub-makefiles which potentially run at different times during the build, so I am having a hard time manually discovering what is doing this. Is there some nice trick I can pull from the filesystem side to help? I tried doing "strace make", but parsing the output I can't seem to find the filename appearing anywhere. I am no strace expert though, so perhaps the file is getting deleted via some identifier rather than the filename? Or I am not stracing spawned processes perhaps?

Related

Understanding Yocto Project sstate-cache functioning

I'm newbie in Yocto Project. I'm managing several projects which all of them have a version for each: development/debug and field/industrialization. While working with the build system, I've noticed the recurrent following scenario.
Let's assume workspace is clean, a fresh build.
Launch bitbake, minimal-image with certain linux-kernel device tree and defconfig parameters. Bitbake will take some time and output files will be created.
Now, change parameters in previously mentioned device tree and defconfig (imagine new peripherals are added). Relaunch bitbake, output files wil be created for this new compilation.
Now, here comes the trick. Reset device tree and defconfig files to the setting before compiling in step 2. Relaunch bitbake and it will be nearly instant. Output files are replaced by the ones created in step 2.
So, I know this is possible due to bitbake and the use of the sstate-cache, or that's what I suppose. I've been googling around for a while but info is not too clear. How does this exactly work? Is there any kind of signature created in compilation time with the inputs of config files and stored associated to the compilation? I'm concerned about this becase I really need to trust that what I'm sending to field is precisely the correct compilation and not the unsafe development version.
And related to this, which is the difference between launching a bitbake -c cleanall or hard deleting deploy and sstate-cache dirs?
Thanks in advance.
The information is available in the official manual:
https://www.yoctoproject.org/docs/3.0/overview-manual/overview-manual.html#shared-state-cache

Meaning warning "File is touched by more than one package"

I am creating a simple linux kernel with buildroot and I am adding a small driver I've done myself, I created the Config.in file and drivername.mk to be able to select the driver in make menuconfig succesfully.
When executing make to build the image, the compilation goes correctly until my driver starts to compile, it looks to compile and create the image right but I get loooots of warnings saying that different files in ./lib/gcc/arm-buildroot-linux-uclibcgnueabihf/ are touched by more than one package: [u'host-gcc-initial', u'host-gcc-final'].
Anyone can explain me a bit about this issue and what is causing it? Do you need any more info to know what is happening? Is it safe to ignore them?
Thanks beforehand
Actually, doing a search on 'touched by more than one package', I found http://lists.busybox.net/pipermail/buildroot/2017-October/205602.html, where we find that this warning can safely be ignored if you're not doing a parallel build and aren't a kernel maintainer.
That said, if you're submitting code for inclusion in the Linux kernel, please be a good citizen and make sure you identify all of the things your code is dependent upon. (I'm not actually an active kernel hacker, so I don't know what method they're using for this right now.)
The basic idea is that there are a bunch of steps in compiling things that need to be done in a logical order. In a small project, we simply use dependencies that we know to put in because we also coded in that dependency. But with a project the size of the kernel, you can guarantee that not everyone does this. Some of them instead just specify dependencies if they're needed for things to build properly - if the default order works, things could go years before someone figures out that there was a missing dependency, causing them grief when they were trying to update just the one thing that was a missing dependency, and the other code not getting updated as a result.
When you're doing things in parallel, on the other hand, it becomes a lot more complicated. Now you really need to have every dependency specified, because there is no longer any inherent dependable order. Some people will probably still build serially, while others use two processing threads. I'll use 8. I've worked in groups that would be inclined to do 30, because they're on a 32 processor machine, and don't really need all of those during the off hours. Suddenly the fact that the file you needed from a directory that normally got processed 30 directories before yours is now getting processed at the same time as your file that needed it, because you didn't list the dependency and everything in those 30 directories that hasn't already been processed and isn't being processed has a dependency that's not yet finished its processing.

Changing the configuration of an already-built kernel and recompiling only what's been changed

The scenario outlined is this:
Someone has built the Linux kernel from source code.
That person wants to change the build configuration.
They still have all of the object files and temporary files that were produced by the previous build operation.
Given all of that, what needs to be done to rebuild as few things as possible in order to save time?
I understand that these will trigger or necessitate a complete recompilation of the source code:
Running make clean.
Running make menuconfig.
make clean is an obvious course of action to avoid to achieve the desired goal because it deletes all object files, both those that would need to be rebuilt and those that could otherwise be left alone. I don't know why make menuconfig would cause the build system to recompile everything, but I've read on here that that is what it would do.
The problem I see with not having the second avenue open to me is that if I change the configuration manually with a text editor, the options that I change might require changes in other options that depend on them (e.g., IMA_TRUSTED_KEYRING depends on SYSTEM_TRUSTED_KEYRING) and I'd be working without an interface that would automatically make those required secondary changes.
It occurred to me that invoking scripts/kconfig/mconf, the program built and launched by make menuconfig, could possibly be a solution to the problems described in the previous paragraph since it was not stated that mconf is what makes the build system recompile everything. But, it possibly could be that very program, so I do not wish to try it until I know it won't do that.
Sooooo, how does one achieve the stated objective given the stated scenario?

How to get all changes you made to your config files (since system install) in one shot?

I wonder if there is any way i could retrieve all changes i made to my various configuration files since install(residing in /etc and so on) in one shot?
I imagine some kind of loop, that uses 'diff' to compare all those files to a 'standard installation' of ubuntu. Output should be a single file with information regarding the changes that were made and a timestamp.
Perhaps there is even a way to put all that in a script and let it run regularly to automatically keep track of future config file changes.
If the files are already modified, I guess your only option is to diff your files with a fresh install. Keep in mind some files might be specific to you computer, I'm thinking of files that can hold device-specific values like your mac address udev/rules.d/70-persistent-net.rules, your drives uuid /etc/fstab, etc.
If you're planning this ahead, there are at least two options you can consider:
use a VCS such as git.
use a filesystem that keeps a complete history of the changes made.

Fast kernel recompile

I'm trying to automate the process of recompile a upgraded kernel. (I mean version upgrade)
What I do:
Backup the object files (*.o) with rsync
Remove the directory and make mrproper
Extract new source and patch
Restore object files with rsync
But I found it doesn't make sense. Since skip compiled things need to get a hash, this should removed it.
Question: What file do I need to keep? or it doesn't exists?
BTW: I already know ccache but it broke with a little config change.
You're doing it wrong™ :-)
Keep the kernel tree as-is and simply patch it using the appropriate incremental patch. For example, for 3.x, you find these patches here:
https://www.kernel.org/pub/linux/kernel/v3.x/incr/
If you currently have 3.18.11 built and want to upgrade to 3.18.12, download the 3.18.11-12 patch:
https://www.kernel.org/pub/linux/kernel/v3.x/incr/patch-3.18.11-12.xz
(or the .gz file, if you don't have the xz utilities installed.)
and apply it. Then "make oldconfig" and "make". Whatever needs to be rebuilt will be rebuilt.
However, it's actually best to not rely on the object file dependency mechanism. Who knows if something might end up not being rebuilt even though it should due to a bug. So I'd recommend starting clean every time with a "make clean" before applying the patch, even though it will rebuild everything.
Are you really in such a big need to save build time? If yes, it might be a better idea to configure the kernel ("make menuconfig") and disable all functionality you don't need (like device drivers for hardware you don't have, file systems you don't care about, networking features you will not use, etc.) Such a kernel that's optimized for my needs only takes about 3 or 4 minutes to build (normally, the full kernel with everything enabled would need over half an hour; or even more these days, it's been a very long time since I've built non-optimized kernels.)
Some more info on kernel patches:
https://www.kernel.org/doc/Documentation/applying-patches.txt
The incremental patch is a good way since it updates time stamps properly.
(GNU) Make use time stamps to identify rebuild so just keep the time stamps to avoid rebuild.
If we need rsync, we should use it with -t option.
Also for a patch doesn't have incremental patches, we can make it manually by comparing patched files.

Resources