[Icc-mot] Build/Link time

[Barry Callahan]

Lance,

I'm happy that you found a solution for release control that works well 
in your shop.

I'm not going to get into the various reasons (some of which are 
political) why we *specifically* want the build timestamp in the final 
output.

Barry

Lance B. Smith wrote:

>One other thought on all of this. I purposefully DON'T want date / time
>embedded. When it was built is irrelevant because of the magic of S-records.
>What matters is that I can diff the S-record and get verification that what
>I just built is still the same as the release build. The release S-record
>has its own OS file date and time. It also has unique version number which
>is embedded. If I embed the date time, then that will make it not diff clean
>and I would have to know to ignore that difference and not others, which is
>an error-prone hassle. 
>
>This is very useful because I can go on writing new stuff conditionally and
>test it carefully in a special test build turning on new code here and there
>until I know it is ready for prime-time, but can quickly revert back to the
>last release, by turning off the new conditional (#define) switches.
>Furthermore, I may have to release another variant of the same base-project
>during the new-coding phase. So, for example if two variants still build to
>match the same two respective release S-record files, then I know the third
>one will also represent the same level of testing, except of course for the
>variation. (We do a lot of testing on our releases, and are fortunate to
>have a very talented tester who can find the whackiest subtle bugs).
>
>This allows me to keep incrementing the same source-control project and not
>have so many versions of individual files to keep track of. And also allows
>me to quickly fix any bugs that may come up during testing after the code is
>handed off. Every hand-off gets unique suffix, that's the release control.
>To avoid having too many suffixes go out the door, all test suffixes are
>lower case. The final release suffix is upper case. The final S-rec must
>diff clean against the latest test suffix, except for the one variation in
>the suffix character.
>
>Just some thoughts.
>
>Best to all
>-- Lance
>
>=====================
>Lance B. Smith, President
>Rapidware, Inc.
>108 East Main Street
>Milan, MI 48160
>734 439 3990
>734 439 3975 Fax
>lance at rapidware.com
>www.rapidware.com
>=====================
>
>
>-----Original Message-----
>From: icc-mot-bounces at imagecraft.com [mailto:icc-mot-bounces at imagecraft.com]
>On Behalf Of John Baraclough
>Sent: Saturday, May 26, 2007 1:25 PM
>To: Discussion List for ICC08/11/12/16 users. You do NOT need to subscribe
>toicc-announce if you are a member of this.
>Subject: Re: [Icc-mot] Build/Link time
>
>Hi Barry,
>
>Just put the __DATE__ & __TIME__ macros into a very small file as 
>below then delete the '.o' file after every build.
>
>HTH
>
>John
>
>/* ************************************************************************
>*\
>   File: DateAndTime.c
>
>   Purpose: Creates a string containing the compilation date & time.
>
>   Revisions:
>   1.00 JNB 2006-10-18
>
>   Notes: The intermediate file 'DateAndTime.o' is deleted after every
>          compilation, so that it is recompiled each time with the new date
>          and time.
>
>\* ************************************************************************
>*/
>
>#include <includes.h>
>
>void GetCompileDateAndTime(void)
>{
>   cstrcpy(MessageOut, "Build - ");
>   cstrcat(MessageOut, __DATE__);
>   cstrcat(MessageOut, " \100 ");
>   cstrcat(MessageOut, __TIME__);
>}
>
>
>
>
>
>
>At 22:10 25/05/2007, you wrote:
>  
>
>>I want to keep a string that indicates the date and time that the 
>>firmware was built.
>>
>>Right now, I'm building a string with __DATE__ and __TIME__
>>
>>Problem is, those are evaluated by the preprocessor at compile time. 
>>If I modify a file which doesn't reference those macros and forget 
>>to do a "rebuild all", the version string doesn't get updated.
>>
>>In ICC12 (both v6 and v7) there's a text field under the "Compiler" 
>>tab of the "Compiler Options" dialog labeled "Execute Command After 
>>Successful Build:"
>>
>>Right now, I'm using this field to touch (update the modification 
>>time) on the file which builds the timestamp. That way, (assuming 
>>the build completed successfully) the next time I rebuild, that file 
>>will be guaranteed to recompile, regardless of whether I edit it or not.
>>
>>Ideally, I'd touch this file *before* building so I know that the 
>>string always accurately reflects the date and time of when the 
>>program was built, regardless of whether the previous compile was 
>>clean or not..
>>
>>
>>Any suggestions?
>>Thanks.
>>
>>Barry
>>
>>_______________________________________________
>>Icc-mot mailing list
>>Icc-mot at imagecraft.com
>>http://dragonsgate.net/mailman/listinfo/icc-mot
>>
>>    
>>
>
>
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