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[Bug]: Build system smells

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Assessment

Difficulty
5/5
Estimated time
Over a week
Newbie friendliness
25/100
Issue type
Bug
Clarity
Needs clarification
Activity status
Active
Tech stack
c, cpp, erlang
Domain
build-system, tooling

Research direction

Start by auditing configure, INSTALL.Unix.md, and src/couch_quickjs/rebar.config.script, then compare the CFLAGS guidance in the linked GNU Make manual and the related #6107 discussion. The checklist spans dependency detection, cross-compilation, Makefile behavior, compiler output, and rebar migration; done requires deciding scope and validating the build across the supported systems.

Written by the indexing model from the issue text.

Description

bug needs-triage
Version

3.5.2

Describe the problem you're encountering

Most of these can be considered minor issues, but

  • Several documentation sources mention a pkg-config dependency. I am under a heavy suspicion that this is a false dependency and that pkg-config is not used anywhere. If it is used anywhere, it is most certainly used wrong (otherwise cross compilation of couchdb would work).

  • https://github.com/apache/couchdb/blob/78395184b02cdc9573c3536ec72721fb353d5442/configure#L337-L343

    This is not how you check for dependencies. This doesn't work well with cross compilation and with systems that deal with includes in a "more creative way" like Nix. Since we have it, why don't we use pkg-config?

    pkg-config --exists mozjs-${SM_VSN}

    This of course requires further testing. couchdb seems to support a lot of systems, some of them might not have pkg-config working. More than one dependency detection mechanism might be needed, but pkg-config should be the first method tried.

  • Do not hardcode -j<N> in a Makefile You do not know how many cores does the build machine have. It it must be done, at least use -j$(nproc) (which also doesn't belong in a Makefile).

  • CFLAGS overriding is done wrong.

    As I've mentioned in #6107, this is issue is often seen in hand-written Makefiles. Please see the following chapter of the GNU Make manual on how CFLAGS overriding should be done: https://ftp.gnu.org/old-gnu/Manuals/make-3.80/html_node/make_125.html#SEC129 It is a minor issue though.

  • rebar doesn't echo the build command when builing C/C++

    This leads to cleaner output, but it is worse to debug when the compilation fails. There's a reason why Make echos the build commands.

configure asks for rebar and rebar3. I know little about erlang, but it seems like rebar3 is a successor of rebar. If that's the case, it would make sense to fully transition to rebar3 if possible.

couchdb doesn't have much C code, but I've found errors in a notable portion of its build process. Languate interop can be difficult to get right. I would advise the following:

  • Drop all C code which isn't necessary for couchdb. If the C code can be replaced by erlang, do it.

    I'd imagine that since couchdb doesn't have much C code, most of it is there for a purpose. But it's useful to reevaluate it just to be sure.

  • Check whether official erlang documentation, rebar or some third party source of documentation could be used for guidance on erlang to C/C++ interop. If for example rebar or some other erlang build tool provides a high-level facility for interop, consider switching to it.

    I assume the C/C++ code is used for interop. If not, disregard this advice.

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Avg merge
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Merged PRs (30d)
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