How to handle additional runtime determined file_dep and targets

[Tom Varga]

Many of my tasks use very complex EDA tools that use many (sometimes hundreds) of source files and also create many files ... none of which I can know in advance.

So, I've written a wrapper script that essentially uses strace to keep track of all of these files, filters out a lot of gunk and creates two files named something like:

{task_name}.depends    # Contains the list of files that the tool used

{task_name}.peer          # Contains the list of files that the tool generated

I then wrote a utility that's called by 'uptodate' that determines if the task is still uptodate the next time doit is run.

This works, but feels like a hack and doesn't 'yet' use md5 for file_dep like behavior.

I've read the manual many times but I can't figure out a better way to do this.

I think that what I'd really like is the ability to update the 'targets' AND 'file_dep' lists immediately upon completion of the 'actions'.

This way the usual file_dep md5 tracking of depends could be used as well as the usual 'targets' tracking.

I'd call something like this 'runtime' determined dependencies.

So, I'm reaching out to the doit experts for suggestions as to how I might implement this capability better.

Thanks,

-Tom