HELP HOME Generic Build Support (GBS) - User Manual
Development

Release RMC-06.02

(2024-04-29)

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Description

Choice of Language| Quality Assurance| Design Considerations

Description

This section describes some basic development aspects of GBS.

Choice of Language

GBS is written in Perl.
I needed a language that will execute exactly the same on various computers (at that time Windows and UNIX), without being depended on installed libraries.
When I started developing GBS in 2001 the best choice was Perl.
Should I start developing now I would probably chose Python.

Quality Assurance

perlcritic

Running perlcritic yields the following results for this version:

    ----
    
       335 files.
     5,603 subroutines/methods.
    80,795 statements.
    
    139,611 lines, consisting of:
        15,423 blank lines.
        36,049 comment lines.
    	68 data lines.
        85,725 lines of Perl code.
         2,346 lines of POD.
    
    Average McCabe score of subroutines was 3.25.
    
    0 violations.
    Violations per file was 0.000.
    Violations per statement was 0.000.
    Violations per line of code was 0.000.
    
    ----

I do use function prototypes, but only with $ and @. Never with \.

Checks

Some proprietary programs (perlxref and perlcheck) are used to detect:

Unused 'use' statements
Missing 'use' statements
Unused functions
Missing functions
Unused global variables
Active (Uncommented) trace/debug statements

Help

Command help (--help) and Help File All Commands are created directly from the code so there is no mismatch.

Design Considerations

It must be fast.
Hence command-line interface and no frills.
Some standard packages duplicated and reduced to cater only for Windows and Linux.
The Perl code is 'compiled' replacing comment-lines by blank lines and removing leading white-space. This makes the files smaller and that reduces disk I/O and parsing.
Only dependent on plain Perl with standard packages.
No extra CPAN installs. No separately installs of any utilities (except of course your compiler-suite).
Must run exactly the same on Windows and Linux.
Straight forward. No exceptions.
Keep it simple.
TBS

Generic Build Support (GBS) - User Manual - Development

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