🚬 Build projects using mulle-make and mulle-sourcetree

... for Android, BSDs, Linux, macOS, SunOS, Windows (MinGW, WSL)

mulle-craft builds two things:

• your project using mulle-make
• the dependencies of your project as specified by a craftorder file. This file can be generated by mulle-sourcetree.

mulle-craft is unaware of the build tool to use (e.g. cmake or xcodebuild). That is determined by mulle-make, which gets called from mulle-craft.

Release Version	Release Notes
	RELEASENOTES

What mulle-craft does

Essentially, mulle-craft is a shortcut for typing:

# Build the dependencies
for project in `mulle-sourcetree craftorder`
do
   for sdk in ${MULLE_CRAFT_SDKS}
   do
      for platform in ${MULLE_CRAFT_PLATFORMS}
      do
         for configuration in ${MULLE_CRAFT_CONFIGURATIONS}
         do
            mulle-make install --sdk "${sdk}" \
                               --platform "${platform}" \
                               --configuration "${configuration}" \
                               --definition-dir ".mulle/share/craft/definition" \
                               --definition-dir "dependency/${sdk}-${platform}/${configuration}/share/mulle-craft/${project}/definition" \
                               --prefix "${tmpdir}" \
                               "${project}"
            mulle-dispense "${tmpdir}" "dependency/${sdk}-${platform}/${configuration}"
         done
      done
   done
done

# Build the project
mulle-make craft "${PWD}"

So it's conceptually fairly simple, if you know how mulle-sourcetree and mulle-make and mulle-dispense work.

But then there are also variations and options :)

The craftinfo and the definition folder

mulle-make accepts a so called definition-folder, which contains compile flags and environment variables "definitions" to craft a project. These definitions can be supplemented and overridden by an auxiliary definition folder.

In a typical mulle-sde project the main definition-folder is located in the .main/<share|etc>/craft folder. The auxiliary definition folder is found inside dependency/share/mulle-craft/${projectname}. This location is called the "craftinfo" as it can also contain other craft related information besides the definitions..

These definitions can be platform specific. A folder suffix distinguishes between the definitions for the various platforms. It is one of mulle-craft tasks to pick the right definition-folders and feed them to mulle-make.

How mulle-craft searches for the craftinfo

First the dependency/share/mulle-craft folder will be searched for matching folders. A match is made if the name of the to-be-built project is the same as the craftinfo name (without extension).

Inside the craftinfo folder there are the "definitions". A definition-folder may have an extension (one of the platform specific.mulle-craft uname outputs. A definition-folder with a matching extension is preferred over a matching name with no extension.

If mulle-craft finds no info-folder there then a project specific .mulle/etc/craft or .mulle/share/craft folder is searched if present.

Dispense styles

mulle-craft builds dependencies in various configuration such as unoptimized (Debug) or optimized (Release). It can also craft for multiple SDKs and platforms. If only a single depedency folder destination were to be used the outputs of the various configurations would clobber each other. That's where the dispense style comes into play.

The easiest to understand is the strict style.

In this picture for simplicity it is assumed that there is only one platform. Otherwise the "sdk" folders would be multiplied by the number of platforms to craft for (with the platform name appended)

The auto style is the default and it is somewhat more convenient in actual usage:

Here the contents of the "Release" folders are moved upwards and the "Release" folder itself is deleted.

Marks used in craftorder builds

A craftorder file contains the project to craft and a list of marks that determine how to craft it:

These are the marks understood by mulle-craft:

Mark	Description
no-craft-configuration-<c>	Ignore dependency for this configuration.
no-craft-os-<os>	Ignore dependency when the host run this OS.
no-craft-platform-<os>	Ignore dependency for this platform.
no-craft-sdk-<sdk>	Ignore dependency for this sdk.
no-dependency	Dont't build this if --no-dependency was specified. (1)
no-dynamic-link	Call mulle-make with --library-style static.
no-inplace	Call mulle-dispense after the build.
no-mainproject	Marks a subproject. (1)
no-memo	Ignore build result value (only used by subprojects). (1)
no-require-configuration-<c>	Ignore if missing for this configuration (e.g. Release).
no-require-os-<os>	Ignore if missing and host runs this particular OS.
no-require-platform-<os>	Ignore if missing and destination platform is this OS.
no-require-sdk-<sdk>	Ignore if missing and sdk is this SDK.
no-require	Ignore if missing.
no-rootheader	Call mulle-dispense with --header-dir 'include/${name}'.
no-static-link	Call mulle-make with --library-style dynamic.
only-liftheaders	Call mulle-dispense with --lift-headers.
only-standalone	Call mulle-make with --library-style standalone. (2)
version-max-<version>	Maximum version of the SDK allowed. (3)
version-min-<version>	Minimum version of the SDK needed. (3)

(1) Used by subproject builds only. These marks are generally not useful.

(2) Standalone shared library builds are (currently?) not used anymore.

(3) Functionality is present, but it's unused so far.

Overview

Install

See mulle-sde-developer how to install mulle-sde, which will also install mulle-craft with required dependencies.

The command to install only the latest mulle-craft into /usr/local (with sudo) is:

curl -L 'https://github.com/mulle-sde/mulle-craft/archive/latest.tar.gz' \
 | tar xfz - && cd 'mulle-craft-latest' && sudo ./bin/installer /usr/local

Author

Nat! for Mulle kybernetiK