Bob 0.13 Release Notes

Changes made since Bob 0.12.0 include the following.

New commands

bob graph - highlevel command for dependency graphs

bob graph can be used to make package dependencies visible. For now graphviz (dot) graphs and d3 graphs are available, where d3 is the default. D3 graphs are interactive (zoom, drag, clickable, with hover effects) graphs using the d3.v4 JavaScript library.

See bob-graph and Visualizing dependencies for more information.

bob archive - manage binary artifacts

The bob archive command can be used to manage binary artifact archives. The command works on the included audit trails of the artifacts and can be used to selectively remove unneeded artifacts from the archive.

See bob-archive for more information.

New features

General

  • Query language for package selection

    Packages can be selected through a query language starting with Bob 0.13. The language loosely resembles XPath. Almost all Bob commands (except bob project) have been converted to the new syntax. See bobpaths for more information.

  • Introduce policies in config.yaml

    Introduce a policy scheme where backwards compatibility can be maintained. Unless a matching version is required by bobMinimumVersion the policies will retain their “old” state to keep backwards compatibility for existing projects.

    If a policy was neither set implicitly by bobMinimumVersion nor by an explicit policies entry in config.yaml Bob will warn the user if the policy is used. Typically the user should forward bobMinimumVersion and set an explicit behaviour.

    See Policies for more information.

  • Introduce system wide / user Bob configuration

    Beside the existing project specific default.yaml this enables parsing of a system wide bobdefaults.yaml (/etc/bobdefault.yaml) as well as a user wide default.yaml ($XDG_CONFIG_HOME/bob/default.yaml or if $XDG_CONFIG_HOME is not set ~/.config/bob/default.yaml).

    Parse order is from system-wide to workspace, meaning you can override settings from the system wide default.yaml in your user default’s and this can be overridden in the workspace default.yaml.

  • git: add remotes property to gitSCM

    The remote-* property allows adding extra remotes whereas the part after remote- corresponds to the remote name and the value given corresponds to the remote URL. For example remote-my_name set to some/url.git will result in an additional remote named my_name and the URL set to some/url.git.

    In conjunction with scmOverrides this can provide a convenient development option to automatically add remotes to private repositories.

Bob build / bob dev

  • Added command configuration section in default.yaml to override Bob’s default build arguments.

  • Add option (--no-log) to disable logfile generation

    Many tools like gcc, ls or git detect whether they are running on a tty to colorize there output. If Bob writes a logfile a pipe is used and these tools do no longer provide a colored output. With the new --no-log option it’s possible to switch of logfile generation and get colored output back.

  • Create symlinks to dependencies next to workspace

    This adds a deps directory next to the workspace that will hold symlinks to all dependencies. The links are sorted by category:

    • If a sandbox is used the symlink will be called “sandbox”

    • All tools are linked by their tool name in the “tools” directory

    • Arguments (i.e. classic dependencies) are linked with their position and name in the “args” directory.

    This allows a quick traversal of the dependency tree after the build.

  • Add option to build provided deps

    Use --with-provided to build provided dependencies and --without-provided to suppress building of provided dependencies (see provideDeps). In combination with --destination, --with-provided is default, otherwise --without-provided is default. Together with the new path query syntax one has now quite complete control over what will land within the destination folder.

  • Pre- and post-scripts

    Add two optional hooks to default.yaml et.al. that can be run before (preBuildHook) and after (postBuildHook) the build. The preBuildHook receives the packages that should be built. It will fail the build if it returns with a non-zero status. The postBuildHook will get the status (success/fail) and the paths to the results as arguments.

    An example script for a postBuildHook can be found in contrib/notify.sh.

  • Add forced-fallback download mode

    If the desired is artifact is available it is downloaded, otherwise all dependencies have to be downloaded.

Bob project

  • QtCreator projects learned options to add include directories (-S) and compile definitions (-C) to a project.

Bob ls

  • Add option (-d) to print package instead of contents

    The query syntax allows to select many packages with a single line. The new -d option allows to see the result set directly instead of the dependencies of these packages.

Bob jenkins

  • Add scm.ignore-hooks extended option

    Sets the “Ignore post-commit hooks” option on all jobs. This instructs Jenkins to ignore changes notified by SCM post-commit hooks if enabled.

Changed behaviour

Backwards compatible policies

Bob will retain the old behavior unless instructed otherwise. See Policies for more information.

  • Make default.yaml includes relative to including yaml file. See relativeIncludes policy.

  • Do not take white listed variables into initial environment

    Previously the current set of environment variables during package calculation started with the ones named by whitelist in default.yaml. This made these variables bound to the value that was set during package calculation. Especially on Jenkins setups this is wrong as the machine that configures the Jenkins may have a different OS environment than the Jenkins executors/slaves.

    See cleanEnvironment policy for more details.

Other behavioural changes

  • Add “live-build-id” support

    Previously binary artifacts required that all involved sources are checked out first. This adds quite a bit of space and time overhead if most of the artifacts are available or if they are updated only sporadically. Now Bob can query git servers and try to download an artifact before any sources are checked out.

    While this can speed up initial builds considerably it comes at the price that the sources are sometimes not checked out at all. Bob buid/dev learned the new --always-checkout option that accepts a regex for package names whose sources are always checked out. See bob-dev for mroe information.

  • Jenkins: ‘discard builds’ deactivated for ‘roots’

    Previously all Jenkins jobs artifacts were discarded if a non-root package is configured as Jenkins root. With this commit the configured roots will keep their artifacts.

  • git: prune stale remote tracking branches

    Always prune stale remote branches. Otherwise branch renames in git repositories may cause jobs to fail.

  • cvs: prune empty directories on initial checkout

    cvs co does not have a -P option like cvs up has. That option removes empty (=deleted) directories. We therefore use a cvs up after the initial cvs co, to get the same behaviour for the initial and subsequent builds.

    Previously, cvs co would have created these empty directories, causing Bob to invoke the build step even if nothing changed in the repository between initial and subsequent checkout.