Hardscrabble 🍫

By Max Jacobson

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another cookie crumb

February 21, 2015

In Wednesday’s post about building Firefox from source the other day, I mentioned one thing I really liked about the experience of first looking at this code base: it kept dropping little hints about what I might need to do next in a way that was actually insightful and helpful. For example, after running their script which installs dependencies, there was some helpful output pointing me to where I could get the code base.

Today I checked in with the project and pulled the change from the last few days. There has been a flurry of activity, none of which means much of anything to me as an outside observer.

I was curious if I would be able to run ./mach build, and if it would take as long on the second run. Instead I got this interesting output:

0:00.35 /usr/bin/make -f client.mk -s
0:01.33
0:01.33 The CLOBBER file has been updated, indicating that an incremental
0:01.33 build since your last build will probably not work. A full/clobber
0:01.33 build is required.
0:01.33
0:01.33 The reason for the clobber is:
0:01.33
0:01.33  Bug 1119335 - (DOMString or sequence<DOMString> or ConstrainDOMStringParameters)
0:01.33  needs binding flush (Bug 1103153).
0:01.33
0:01.33 Clobbering can be performed automatically. However, we didn't
0:01.33 automatically clobber this time because:
0:01.33
0:01.33   Automatic clobbering is not enabled
0:01.33   (add "mk_add_options AUTOCLOBBER=1" to your mozconfig).
0:01.33
0:01.33 The easiest and fastest way to clobber is to run:
0:01.33
0:01.33  $ mach clobber
0:01.33
0:01.33 If you know this clobber doesn't apply to you or you're feeling lucky
0:01.33 -- Well, are ya? -- you can ignore this clobber requirement by
0:01.33 running:
0:01.33
0:01.33  $ touch /Users/maxjacobson/src/gecko-dev/obj-x86_64-apple-darwin14.3.0/CLOBBER
0:01.33 make: *** [/Users/maxjacobson/src/gecko-dev/obj-x86_64-apple-darwin14.3.0/CLOBBER] Error 1
0:01.36 78 compiler warnings present.

That’s super interesting! Things I learned from this:

I took a look at The CLOBBER file by using my fuzzy file opener to look for a file called CLOBBER and found it, in the root-level of the project. It contains more details about how to use it:

# To trigger a clobber replace ALL of the textual description below,
# giving a bug number and a one line description of why a clobber is
# required. Modifying this file will make configure check that a
# clobber has been performed before the build can continue.
#
# MERGE NOTE: When merging two branches that require a CLOBBER, you should
#             merge both CLOBBER descriptions, to ensure that users on
#             both branches correctly see the clobber warning.
#
#                  O   <-- Users coming from both parents need to Clobber
#               /     \
#          O               O
#          |               |
#          O <-- Clobber   O  <-- Clobber
#
# Note: The description below will be part of the error message shown to users.
#
# Modifying this file will now automatically clobber the buildbot machines \o/
#

# Are you updating CLOBBER because you think it's needed for your WebIDL
# changes to stick? As of bug 928195, this shouldn't be necessary! Please
# don't change CLOBBER for WebIDL changes any more.

Bug 1119335 - (DOMString or sequence<DOMString> or ConstrainDOMStringParameters)
needs binding flush (Bug 1103153).

It’s probably gratuitous to just copy this whole thing in here, especially when the last few lines are designed to change, but it’s pretty interesting, and I have a weird superstition about linking to files on GitHub, for example, because what if that file gets moved and my link goes dead?

This file is like a cache. As long as it stays the same, you can keep building. As soon as it changes, you need to clobber before you can build. It seems like a clever solution to me (I especially like the detail about combining clobber notes so when two people insist on a clobber, they each get the benefit of the other’s). You just need to remember when to expire the cache, which leaves a little cookie crumb for the next developer to work on the project.

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