This manual is last updated 8 July 2004 for version 1.3 of Autobuild.
Copyright © 2004 Simon Josefsson.
Permission is granted to copy, distribute and/or modify this document under the terms of the GNU Free Documentation License, Version 1.1 or any later version published by the Free Software Foundation; with no Invariant Sections, with the Front-Cover Texts being “A GNU Manual,” and with the Back-Cover Texts as in (a) below. A copy of the license is included in the section entitled “GNU Free Documentation License.”(a) The FSF's Back-Cover Text is: “You have freedom to copy and modify this GNU Manual, like GNU software. Copies published by the Free Software Foundation raise funds for GNU development.”
Autobuild is a package that process output from building software, primarily focused on packages using Autoconf and Automake, and then generate a HTML summary file, containing links to each build log. The output include project name, version, build host types (cross compile aware), compiler host name, date of build, and indication of success or failure. The output is indexed in many ways to simplify browsing.
The quickest way to get an understanding of what Autobuild can do for you, is to look at some example output. For now, we recommend looking at how Autobuild is used in the GNU Libidn project, see http://josefsson.org/autobuild-logs/libidn.html.
The first step is to collect build logs of your package. Autobuild does not help you do this. A very simple way to do this is as follows:
jas@latte:~/src/libidn-0.5.0$ ./configure > ~/foo
jas@latte:~/src/libidn-0.5.0$ make check >> ~/foo
We'll continue directly and invoke autobuild on the log file.
jas@latte:~/src/libidn-0.5.0$ cd
jas@latte:~$ autobuild -v foo
Project: libidn
Revision: 0.5.0
Mode: default
Hosttype: i686-pc-linux-gnu
Buildtype: i686-pc-linux-gnu
Hostname: unknown
Timestamp: unknown
Status: ok
./autobuild,project=libidn,revision=0.5.0,mode=default,hosttype=i686-pc-linux-gnu,buildtype=i686-pc-linux-gnu,hostname=unknown,timestamp=unknown,status=ok,log.txt
jas@latte:~$ ls -la foo autobuild\,project\=libidn\,revision\=0.5.0\,mode\=default\,hosttype\=i686-pc-linux-gnu\,buildtype\=i686-pc-linux-gnu\,hostname\=unknown\,timestamp\=unknown\,status\=ok\,log.txt
-rw-r--r-- 1 jas jas 24821 2004-07-07 02:27 autobuild,project=libidn,revision=0.5.0,mode=default,hosttype=i686-pc-linux-gnu,buildtype=i686-pc-linux-gnu,hostname=unknown,timestamp=unknown,status=ok,log.txt
-rwxr-xr-x 1 jas jas 24821 2004-07-07 02:27 foo
jas@latte:~$
The foo file is identical to the autobuild,*,log.txt
except for the name. The special form of the file name is used by
abindex to create nice looking indicies for your log files.
If you have Emacs and htmlize.el installed, you can also get nice HTML outputs of the build logs, as follows:
jas@latte:~$ autobuild --html -v foo
Project: libidn
Revision: 0.5.0
Mode: default
Hosttype: i686-pc-linux-gnu
Buildtype: i686-pc-linux-gnu
Hostname: unknown
Timestamp: unknown
Status: ok
./autobuild,project=libidn,revision=0.5.0,mode=default,hosttype=i686-pc-linux-gnu,buildtype=i686-pc-linux-gnu,hostname=unknown,timestamp=unknown,status=ok,log.html
jas@latte:~$
You may have noticed that some fields have default looking values. This is because autobuild could not guess them using the log file you provided. Either you can improve the guessing logic, or simpler, specify the values on the command line.
jas@latte:~$ autobuild --html -v foo --hostname latte --timestamp=20040607-0220
Project: libidn
Revision: 0.5.0
Mode: default
Hosttype: i686-pc-linux-gnu
Buildtype: i686-pc-linux-gnu
Hostname: latte
Timestamp: 20040607-0220
Status: ok
./autobuild,project=libidn,revision=0.5.0,mode=default,hosttype=i686-pc-linux-gnu,buildtype=i686-pc-linux-gnu,hostname=latte,timestamp=20040607-0220,status=ok,log.html
jas@latte:~$
Much better. Let's look at the HTML output for our example. First,
invoke abindex to get the files.
jas@latte:~$ abindex autobuild,*,log.html > example.html
jas@latte:~$
Recall that since we supplied some values, we have two different files matching the file name glob. Since both files originated from the same build, it will not be very exciting.
See the examples/ sub-directory in the Autobuild source code distribution for all files generated above.
A normal build log from an Autoconf/Automake based project do normally
not include the project name, revision, time stamp of build or host
name of the build host. Specifying these values using
--project etc (see Invoking autobuild) can be tedious,
especially considering that it would be so simple for the Autoconf
configure script to print them.
To solve the above problem, Autobuild include a M4 macro suitable for use in your Autoconf project, invoked from configure.ac. Properly installed, the macro will make your project print something similar to the following output (this example is what the Autobuild itself print during its build), as part of its build. This format is later recognized by Autobuild.
...
checking build system type... i686-pc-linux-gnu
checking host system type... i686-pc-linux-gnu
configure: autobuild project... autobuild
configure: autobuild revision... 1.2
configure: autobuild hostname... latte
configure: autobuild timestamp... 20040708-163123
...
To use the macro, put something like the following in your configure.ac:
AB_INIT
Then make sure your Autoconf installation can find the autobuild.m4 which should have been installed when you installed Autobuild.
The macro can take an optional parameter, the build mode, as follows:
AB_INIT(whatever)
This would result in an additional message:
...
configure: autobuild mode... whatever
...
Read and parse build logs. See Tutorial, for more discussion.
autobuild [OPTION]... [FILE]...
Read and parse build logs to find project name, revision, build mode, build host type, build type (for cross compile builds), hostname, and timestamp, then produce a file (named depending on the extracted param‐ eters) with the build log.
Mandatory arguments to long options are mandatory for short options too.
--abort
Abort if guessing values fail. With the exceptions of build
mode (falls back to ’default’) and the status (falls back to
’fail’).
-n, --dry-run
Just parse, don’t write file.
--html Create HTML output instead of text. Need Emacs and htmlize.el.
-o, --outdir=DIR
Create files in specified directory.
For use when autobuild fail to guess the values properly:
-p, --project=STRING
Specify project name.
--revision=STRING
Specify project revision.
--mode=STRING
Specify build mode (typically ’default’).
--hosttype=STRING
Specify host type (e.g., i686‐pc‐linux‐gnu).
--buildtype=STRING
Specify build type (e.g., m68k‐uclinux‐elf). Different from
hosttype for cross compiles.
--hostname=STRING
Specify name of host log was created on.
--timestamp=STRING
Specify when build was made. Any date format will work, but
’YYYY‐MM‐DDTHH:MM:SS’ is recommended.
--status=STRING
Outcome of build. Any string will work, but "ok" and "fail" are
recommended for the two basic outcomes.
Other options:
-v, --verbose
Explain what is being done.
--help Display this help and exit.
--version
Output version information and exit.
Create HTML index to build logs.
abindex [OPTION]... [FILE]...
Create HTML index to Autobuild generated build logs. See Tutorial, for more discussion.
Mandatory arguments to long options are mandatory for short options too.
--abort
Abort when encountering bad filenames.
-n, --dry-run
Just parse, don’t write file.
-o, --outdir=DIR
Create files in specified directory.
Other options:
-v, --verbose
Explain what is being done.
--help Display this help and exit.
--version
Output version information and exit.
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