GetPoplog seeks to provide automation of the build and packaging process using familiar Unix tools. We try to keep our dependencies relatively light and very widely available on all Unixes.

• /bin/bash is our preferred scripting language.
  • /bin/dash is an acceptable alternative for scripting.
• GNU Make is our preferred build tool.
  • We hope to move to just in the not-too-distant future.
• Python3 - any version that is at least 6 months old.
  • Python2 is not acceptable.

Makefile

The makefile should have a standard prelude, shown below:

################################################################################
### Standard Makefile intro
################################################################################

# Important check
MAKEFLAGS+=--warn-undefined-variables

# Causes the commands in a recipe to be issued in the same shell (beware cd commands not executed in a subshell!)
.ONESHELL:
SHELL:=/bin/bash

# When using ONESHELL, we want to exit on error (-e) and error if a command fails in a pipe (-o pipefail)
# When overriding .SHELLFLAGS one must always add a tailing `-c` as this is the default setting of Make.
.SHELLFLAGS:=-e -o pipefail -c

# Invoke the all target when no target is explicitly specified.
.DEFAULT_GOAL:=help

# Delete targets if their recipe exits with a non-zero exit code.
.DELETE_ON_ERROR: