Correctness

Guarantees

The system ensures that a task will be executed if one if the following is true:

  • An output does not exist.
  • An input-path changed.
  • An input-timestamp changed.
  • An output-path changed.
  • An output-timestamp changed.
  • A deposit-timestamp changed.
  • The check-object changed.

You are free to use any version control system you like as long as it modifies timestamps when replacing or patching files. Cook is safer than Make which only relies on two properties: output-existence and input-timestamps being less than the output timestamps. For example, make will typically not rebuild if you change a command to include a new flag, but Cook would track that flag using the check-object.

Additionally, since Cook also tracks the output timestamps, you are free to go into the build directory and edit files at will. The edited files will be rebuild. All in all, the criteria should be really safe in practice, since version control systems like git guarantee that they will set the current time as the timestamp on every file they modify. On top of that, Cook will delete files in your build directory which are not mentioned in your build script. This means you really always get a correct build. Additional security measures include tracking whether an input changed during the execution of a rule, since that might violate our correctness requirements, and also ensuring that the output was actually at least touched by the rule.

Warnings

Cook will store the warnings your compiler produces. It will remind you of these warnings by reprinting them when necessary. This way -Werror is not really needed since it is mostly used to make sure that one does not forget the warnings when they are not reprinted by Make or other tools.

Reproducibility

The builtin rules provided by Cook are designed to output reproducible results. This website talks about why this might be important for you or users of your software. Performing a build on the same path and using the same environment (including compiler versions, etc.) as someone else should ideally yield bit-by-bit identical results. If you encounter a case where this is not true, please file an issue.