[CMake] CTest: use 'make -k' instead of 'make -i'

[Marcel Loose]

On Mon, 2010-10-25 at 17:30 +0200, Michael Wild wrote:
> On 25. Oct, 2010, at 17:14 , Tyler Roscoe wrote:
> 
> > On Mon, Oct 25, 2010 at 04:54:41PM +0200, Michael Wild wrote:
> >> On 25. Oct, 2010, at 16:45 , Marcel Loose wrote:
> >>> Wouldn't it make more sense to use 'make -k' instead? 
> >> 
> >> Some weeks ago I also wanted to propose this, but then realized one
> >> important drawback of -k: Say, you have target B depending on A. If
A
> >> fails, nothing from B will be compiled, thus hiding programming
errors
> >> that will only show up once A is fixed. What needs to be fixed is
the
> >> error parser in CTest.
> > 
> > Marcel,
> > 
> > I think you can override this compiler flag with use of
> > CTestCustom.cmake or one of those override mechanisms.
> > 
> > Michael and everyone,
> > 
> > I think that use case is pretty narrow. If I know that B depends on
A
> > and I see that A failed, I'm going to take a pretty suspicious view
of
> > any build errors in B -- what if they were somehow caused by the
failure
> > in A?
> > 
> > Besides, doesn't -k satisfy your use case while removing the
confusing
> > and erroneous report of success caused by using -i?
> > 
> > Thanks,
> > tyler
> 
> 
> Problem is, not a single file from B will be compiled (if building
serial, that is). And I think that such errors are pretty common. Say,
somebody changes the implementation of A (not the interface!) and
introduces a compilation error there and somebody else messes with B.
Although compilation errors from B would still be informative (they
don't depend on the implementation of A, only its interface), they don't
show up until A is fixed, wasting potentially a lot of time.
> 
> I agree with you that it is a good thing to abort on first error when
doing interactive work, but on a dashboard I prefer to see the whole
picture and determine for myself whether a particular error is due to
another, earlier error or not.
> 
> And if you really must, you can do the override by setting the
CTEST_BUILD_COMMAND variable to e.g. "/usr/bin/make -k".
> 
> Michael
> 
> --
> There is always a well-known solution to every human problem -- neat,
plausible, and wrong.
> H. L. Mencken
> 

Hi Michael,

If it's really the case that nothing from B will be compiled, then I can
understand the rationale of using 'make -i', instead of 'make -k'. But,
read my other mail as well.

Anyway, would it possible to let 'ctest' return with a non-zero exit
status when build errors occur? It would really help in situations where
'ctest -D ExperimentalBuild' is used in a script. It means, though, that
'ctest' cannot rely on the exit status of 'make' (because 'make -i'
always returns 0); it'll need to analyze its output. Any ideas on this?

Best regards,
Marcel Loose.