Alcatel-Lucent nmake Product Builder
Customer Support Newsletter

nmake Eclipse Plugin

The current 0.4.0 release of the experimental nmake Eclipse plugin has been verified against Eclipse 3.4.2 (ganymede) and CDT 5. The plugin functions properly under this configuration and no issues have been found. The 0.4.0 plugin can now be installed from the plugin update site when using CDT 4 or greater.

Visit the nmake Eclipse update site to upgrade or install the plugin: http://www.bell-labs.com/project/nmake/download/eclipse

nmake 11 Release Schedule

The team is working towards the nmake 11 release targeted for 2Q2009. The beta period is tentatively scheduled for 6/9/2009 through 7/17/2009. If you are interested in trying the beta please let us know at nmake@alcatel-lucent.com. Here are some of the changes in the new release in addition to the usual fixes and enhancements.

• Enhanced and hardened support for XML structured build log generation.
• Experimental build log XML transformation supporting HTML based visualization and navigation.
• Fixes for jars, shared libraries and scanrules.
• Fixes for several engine core dump issues.

Build Log Transformations

The last newsletter described an experimental feature that generates XML formatted build logs. The feature captures information about nmake targets triggered during a build, including target attributes such as start and end times, the association of each target with its build command output, and the target hierarchy arising from recursive builds.

This log format makes it possible to develop transformations that generate enhanced views of a build. An experimental transformation to HTML has been developed that provides:

• High level list, graph, and table views with build targets color coded by exit status and linked to detailed views.
• A summary page providing information and statistics for the entire build.
• Pages summarizing information for each Makefile run during the build, including build output for each triggered target.
• Indices allowing quick navigation around the build data. The indices allow jumping to other views, traversing the Makefile recursion hierarchy, and direct access to failed targets.

The result of an example transformation is shown in the screenshots below. It was generated from a a typical recursive build consisting of 15 Makefiles and 458 leaf (non-recursive) targets. Build errors, shown in red, were deliberately included to show how they are handled. Click any of the screenshots below to jump to the full example.

The experimental transformation scripts are targeted for inclusion in the upcoming nmake 11 release.

Suggestions

We're open to suggestions for future articles. If there is anything you would like to see in the newsletter please send us a note to nmake@alcatel-lucent.com. Thanks for your support!