PR# 17979 Config file not saved in some cases when automatic_backup="true"
Problem Report Summary
Submitter: prestoat2000
Category: Compiler
Priority: Medium
Date: 2011/11/18
Class: Bug
Severity: Non-critical
Number: 17979
Release: 7.0.87819
Confidential: No
Status: Analyzed
Responsible:
Environment: Mozilla/5.0 (X11; U; SunOS sun4u; en-US; rv:1.9.0.10) Gecko/2009042715 Firefox/3.0.10
Solaris 10
Synopsis: Config file not saved in some cases when automatic_backup="true"
Description
In some cases, compiling a system with a config file that specifies automatic_backup="true" does not cause a copy of the .ecf file to be saved in the BACKUP tree. This makes it hard to track down incrementality bugs.
To Reproduce
Freeze with attached config file, with all_classes set to "true" or "false" (doesn't seem to matter). Examine EIFGENs/test/BACKUP tree, looking for .ecf files. No copy of test.ecf was saved.
Problem Report Interactions
I found the reason here. If no classes of the current ECF are compiled, then the associated ECF will never be copied because the copy of the ECF file is performed the first time a class of the ECF is being compiled. Currently the backup is solely based on copying the classes, not the config file. When we added ECF support, we copied the ECF after copying the class. However here there is no class so nothing gets copied. It is clearly different from the other issues I mentioned where no ECF were copied because in those cases, there were Eiffel classes being compiled. I think the proper thing to do would be to copy all the config file at each steps in the creation of the backup directories even if it creates a lot of empty directory.