Bob 0.17 Release Notes

Changes made since Bob 0.16.0 include the following.

New features

Windows compatibility

Bob can be installed on Windows with a native Python installation. Together with the newly added PowerShell support (see below) it is possible to use Bob without any Unix Tools on Windows. It is also possible to use MSYS2 bash.exe from a natively installed Bob.

Recipes

  • Bob gained support for multiple scripting languages.

    Traditionally Bob supported only bash scripts. Starting with this version it is also possible to use PowerShell in a recipe. The default language is still ‘bash’ but this may be overridden by the scriptLanguage setting in config.yaml. The default language is used to call the right interpreter for the checkoutScript, buildScript, packageScript or fingerprintScript scripts.

    For each *Script entry there is a variant for the different supported languages. For example the buildScript has the buildScriptBash and buildScriptPwsh siblings. They hold the scripts for the respective languages. This schema extends to the other scripts too.

    The selection which language is used at build time is done during execution. By default bash scripts are used. The language may be configured globally in config.yaml by setting scriptLanguage or on in the recipe/class by the scriptLanguage key.

  • Add support for expressions in if fields.

    Traditionally if fields (e.g. in depends) are strings that can use substitutions to produce a boolean result. These strings are then considered false if they were empty, “0” or “false”. In any other case they are considered to be true. Example:

    if: "$(or,$(eq,${FOO},bar),${BAZ})"

    Instead you can now write:

    if: !expr |
    "${FOO}" == "bar" || "${BAZ}"

    which is much more readable and can be properly indented if the expression gets complex. The new syntax is allowed at all if and fingerprintIf keys.

  • Bob gained a simple import SCM that allows importing files from the project directly in to a src workspace. It copies the directory specified in url to the workspace. See checkoutSCM for more details.

  • Relax whitelist name schema.

    Real environment variables can almost have any character in them. Bob now allows to white list any variable name that is supported by the OS.

  • Allow Windows paths for URL SCM.

    On Windows it is now allowed to use fully qualified paths in the url SCM, e.g. C:\tmp.txt, file:///C:/tmp.txt or \\server\path.

  • The BOB_HOST_PLATFORM variable is automatically populated.

    When building on multiple platforms the recipes will have to make platform specific decisions. The standard BOB_HOST_PLATFORM variable provides a standard way to identify the host platform type. See {checkout,build,package}Vars for more details.

  • The git SCM now supports shallow clones.

    By setting the shallow attribute on a git SCM the number of commits that are fetched from the tip of the remote branch(es) is limited. This can improve initial clone times considerably. Likewise a singleBranch attribute was added too which is implicitly enabled if shallow is used. Because it is a regular SCM property the user can override it as needed from default.yaml via scmOverrides:

    scmOverrides:
    - match:
          scm: git
      set:
          shallow: 1

    See checkoutSCM for more details.

Bob build / bob dev

  • Gained an option to build without audit trail.

    The generation of the audit trail is usually barely noticeable. But if a large number of repositories is checked out it can add a significant overhead nonetheless. This release adds a -A / --without-audit option so that the user can skip the generation of an audit trail to save this time.

    Without an audit trail it is not possible anymore to upload an artifact because vital information is missing. Consequently the generation of an audit trail is skipped if the audit trail of a dependency is missing or if it cannot be read. Otherwise the information would be incomplete.

Bob query-path

  • query-path will now show a message if the query matched no packages at all or if an expected directory is missing. This is printed on stderr so that it does not interfere with existing scripts.

  • Added -q option.

    Adds the possibility to silence the error messages provided by query-path on missing packages and paths.

  • Added --fail option.

    This option enables non-zero return codes in the case of missing packages and/or paths.

Visual Studio project generator

  • Built Windows executables are recognized and can be directly executed from Visual Studio. This includes debugging them but requires that the executables are built with the Microsoft compiler, though. Visual Studio cannot debug executables built by MSYS2 gcc.

Plugins

  • The bob path is now passed to generator plugins.

    Starting with apiVersion 0.17 the generator plugin will get the path of the Bob executable. The plugin may use it to generate project files that work even if Bob is not in $PATH. See Generators for more details.

Changed behaviour

Other behavioural changes

  • The bobMinimumVersion comparison is now fully SemVer compatible. Pre-release versions are considered to precede the final release version. When using pre-release versions of Bob the inferred version is based on the next anticipated version, e.g. when the last tag was 0.17.0 the calculated pre-release version will be 0.17.1-devXXX. This does not impact released versions.

Backwards incompatible changes

  • Recipe or class YAML files that start with a dot (.) are ignored. Some editors generate such hidden temporary files while editing recipes. It’s still allowed to use command line configuration files (bob -c ...) or include files (default.yaml) starting with a dot.

  • Fixed two bugs related to fingerprinting of build steps. Under certain recipe conditions it could happen that fingerprinting was not correct and even lead to inconsistent behaviour between subsequent invocations. The fix might break the discovery of binary artifacts that were created with older versions of Bob if the project used fingerprints and had actually triggered those bugs.

  • Fixed another bug related to fingerprints. Jenkins builds uploaded incorrect fingerprint prediction files for non-relocatable packages. This might lead to unneeded checkouts for a user but the correct binary artifacts will still be found.

  • Binary artifacts of the major platforms are always separated: POSIX systems (e.g. Linux), native Windows and MSYS2 on Windows. Artifacts that are built on these platforms are not shared between each other, even when building the same recipes. The reason is that the file systems and how they are seen by Python differ too much. It is not possible to reliably share these artifacts without introducing occidental false sharing.

    A similar distinction is done on Windows regarding the capability to create symlinks. Some scripts and archive utilities will behave differently if it is possible to create symlinks on Windows or not. This capability is not granted by default but only available to administrative shells or user accounts that were given the SeCreateSymbolicLinkPrivilege privilege. Builds with and without the symlink capability are now treated differently because there there would be false sharing if symlinks are actually used.

  • Environment variable names in default.yaml are now correctly validated.

    Environment variables that are defined in the recipes must not begin with BOB_ because this namespace is reserved for future usage by Bob. This was not enforced yet for variables in default.yaml.

Performance improvements

  • Audit trail generation is not blocking execution of other parallel jobs anymore. Previously Bob was not scheduling new jobs while an audit trail was generated.

  • The audit trail of a checkout step is now only updated if something has changed in the workspace. If no updates were found and the checkout workspace did not change the old audit trail record is still considered valid. This saves significant time for large checkouts because no SCM status need to be scanned.