threads / discuss / 60437

Constant recompilation when GENERATE_COMPILATION_DATABASE is set

Subject: Constant recompilation when GENERATE_COMPILATION_DATABASE is set

## tl;dr

3 messages between Oct 27, 2023 and Oct 27, 2023.

replies: 2people: 2as markdown or json

brian m. carlson· Oct 27, 2023, 11:45 UTC · lore

I typically use clangd with Git for the nice language server protocol (LSP) support. I noticed that when GENERATE_COMPILATION_DATABASE is set (which is used so clangd can find the proper flags), `make` rebuilds all of the files every time, even if I do it back to back. This persists even after a `git clean -dxf`.

Obviously, this is not great, since it means the turnaround time to compile changes is slower. Unfortunately, I'm not a huge expert in make and I'm unsure what the right solution is here. I'd appreciate anyone's thoughts on how to improve this.

This is on a Debian sid (unstable) amd64 system with the following configuration. The version of clang in use is Debian's 16.0.6.

---- NO_OPENSSL=1 DC_SHA1=1 NETTLE_SHA256=1 DEVELOPER=1 NO_SVN_TESTS=1 NO_PYTHON=1 USE_ASCIIDOCTOR=1 USE_ASCIIDOCTOR_MANPAGE=1 CC=clang GENERATE_COMPILATION_DATABASE=yes CSPRNG_METHOD=getrandom getentropy ----

-- 
brian m. carlson (he/him or they/them)
Toronto, Ontario, CA
Philippe Blain· Oct 27, 2023, 15:41 UTC · re: brian m. carlson · lore

Re: Constant recompilation when GENERATE_COMPILATION_DATABASE is set

Hi brian,
Le 2023-10-27 à 07:45, brian m. carlson a écrit :
Show 28 quoted lines
> I typically use clangd with Git for the nice language server protocol
> (LSP) support.  I noticed that when GENERATE_COMPILATION_DATABASE is set
> (which is used so clangd can find the proper flags), `make` rebuilds all
> of the files every time, even if I do it back to back.  This persists
> even after a `git clean -dxf`.
> 
> Obviously, this is not great, since it means the turnaround time to
> compile changes is slower.  Unfortunately, I'm not a huge expert in make
> and I'm unsure what the right solution is here.  I'd appreciate anyone's
> thoughts on how to improve this.
> 
> This is on a Debian sid (unstable) amd64 system with the following
> configuration.  The version of clang in use is Debian's 16.0.6.
> 
> ----
> NO_OPENSSL=1
> DC_SHA1=1
> NETTLE_SHA256=1
> DEVELOPER=1
> NO_SVN_TESTS=1
> NO_PYTHON=1
> USE_ASCIIDOCTOR=1
> USE_ASCIIDOCTOR_MANPAGE=1
> CC=clang
> GENERATE_COMPILATION_DATABASE=yes
> CSPRNG_METHOD=getrandom getentropy
> ----
> 
Indeed, with GENERATE_COMPILATION_DATABASE=yes and CC=clang I can reproduce with:

make clean make -j make -j # this rebuilds everything make -j # this does not rebuild anything

so the second 'make' invocation is buggy, but not subsequent ones.

I took a look at the 'make -d' output and we can see it is the dependency on the 'compile_commands' directory that is the culprit, on the second invocation it is newer than the the first object file that makes checks.

This makes sense since each time we compile an object we put the JSON fragment in compile_commands, so the directory is updated each time an object is built, so clearly its modification date will be newer than the one of the first object built.

One way to fix this is to use the same trick that is used for the '.depend' directories created to hold the Makefile dependencies:

diff --git a/Makefile b/Makefile
index 5776309365..f6f7255dd1 100644
--- a/Makefile
+++ b/Makefile
@@ -2701,7 +2701,7 @@ endif
 compdb_dir = compile_commands
 
 ifeq ($(GENERATE_COMPILATION_DATABASE),yes)
-missing_compdb_dir = $(compdb_dir)
+missing_compdb_dir = $(filter-out $(wildcard $(compdb_dir)), $(compdb_dir))
 $(missing_compdb_dir):
 	@mkdir -p $@
 
That is, we define missing_compdb_dir to 'compile_commands' only if the directory
is not yet created.

I'll try to send a proper patch for this.

Thanks for the report,

Philippe.
brian m. carlson· Oct 27, 2023, 19:36 UTC · re: Philippe Blain · lore

Re: Constant recompilation when GENERATE_COMPILATION_DATABASE is set

On 2023-10-27 at 15:41:23, Philippe Blain wrote:
Show 18 quoted lines
> One way to fix this is to use the same trick that is used for the '.depend' directories
> created to hold the Makefile dependencies: 
> 
> diff --git a/Makefile b/Makefile
> index 5776309365..f6f7255dd1 100644
> --- a/Makefile
> +++ b/Makefile
> @@ -2701,7 +2701,7 @@ endif
>  compdb_dir = compile_commands
>  
>  ifeq ($(GENERATE_COMPILATION_DATABASE),yes)
> -missing_compdb_dir = $(compdb_dir)
> +missing_compdb_dir = $(filter-out $(wildcard $(compdb_dir)), $(compdb_dir))
>  $(missing_compdb_dir):
>  	@mkdir -p $@
>  
> That is, we define missing_compdb_dir to 'compile_commands' only if the directory
> is not yet created.

I can confirm that this solves my problem very nicely. Thanks for such a fast response.

-- 
brian m. carlson (he/him or they/them)
Toronto, Ontario, CA

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