Running pre- and post-commands

[zkarj735]

With the recent debugger support integrated into VSCode, I am once again looking at how we might use bob for our regular work.

One of our current tools is a homegrown "compile processor" which provides facilities to, among others:

• Handle CRTxxx parameter overrides — handled by bob
• Run commands before compile
• Run commands after compile

I set about figuring out how to do those pre- and post-commands and came up with this (spurious) example, which works.

DSPALT.CMD: DSPALT.CMDSRC
	system -i "crtdtaara qgpl/signal type(*char) len(10)"
	$(CMDSRC_TO_CMD_RECIPE)

The trouble with this is it means having to know, for any given object type, what the name of the recipe is.

Is there a better way to do this?

I think I can build out the other functions we have by building helper commands to use as above, so this is the key requirement.

[zkarj735]

Another important aspect of this would be the ability to ensure pre- and post-commands and the compile happen in the same context. I found documentation regarding .ONESHELL but this appears not to be supported in the make tool.

I really need someone with more knowledge in this space to weigh in. Per the bob documentation...

Bob bridges the gap between the Linux/Unix environment with which Make is familiar and the QSYS file system in which most IBM i software lives.

It's not making enough of a bridge yet, in my view. I'm still fighting a combination of Code for IBM i, makefiles, and VSCode just to compile a simple utility reliably.

[zkarj735]

I also considered whether I could adapt our compile processor to deal with IFS source files, but that's only half the story, as bob will intrinsically use the standard CRTxxx commands, meaning we would have even more trouble adapting it to use ours.

[edmundreinhardt]

Bob, does not yet support that. I am looking at getting -e variables to influence the build and maybe somebody could contribute a PRE and POST command to the recipes.

But in the meantime your approach is not bad. I haven't tried it, but it looks like it should work.

[edmundreinhardt]

This issue also needs the ability to have environment variables affect the build

[zkarj735]

The example I gave above works but I later learned those commands are running in parallel, which PRE and POST commands should not, of course. I tried to use the ONESHELL directive but could not get it to work.

[edmundreinhardt]

Code is there, but does not seem to be having an effect. Needs debugging.