Adding ibmi-bob as the build tool

In the tooling chapter of this book, we installed ibmi-bob with yum. We did this because ibmi-bob will be the build tool we use to build our entire application. This section is assuming source code has been moved to the IFS.

Verify bob is installed.

While the application is called Better Object Builder (BOB), the command to invoke it is makei. To verify BOB is installed, we can use makei -v to get the version.

-bash-5.1$ makei -v
Bob version 2.3.9

Bob implementation

BOB has two main parameters.

makei build to build the entire project
makei compile -f mysource.rpgle to build a single object, and items it depends on

Getting started (`iproj.json`)

We are going to start with a simple project, company_system, which is available as open-source on GitHub.

BOB requires a file called iproj.json, which describes information about your project, as well as some build configuration.

We’re going to create iproj.json in the root of the project, like so:

{
    "version": "0.0.1",
    "description": "The company system",
    "objlib": "&BINLIB",
    "preUsrlibl": ["&BINLIB", "SAMPLE"],
    "includePath": ["qrpgleref"],
    "setIBMiEnvCmd": [],
    "repository" : "https://github.com/worksofliam/company_system"
}

The SAMPLE library is included here as that’s what the programs use to fetch data. The sample schema can be created by using this system-supplied SQL procedure:

call qsys.create_sql_sample('SAMPLE')

If you try and run makei build, you will see that it complains because we don’t have BINLIB defined.

-bash-5.1$ makei build
BINLIB must be defined first in the environment variable.

Parameter

You can pass in environment variables as parameter.

-bash-5.1$ makei build -e BINLIB=LIAMA
Set variable <BINLIB> to 'LIAMA'
> make -k BUILDVARSMKPATH="/tmp/tmpdh7q_j4u" -k BOB="/QOpenSys/pkgs/lib/bob" -f "/QOpenSys/pkgs/lib/bob/mk/Makefile" all
/QOpenSys/pkgs/lib/bob/mk/Makefile:66: /home/LINUX/company_system/Rules.mk: No such file or directory
make: *** No rule to make target '/home/LINUX/company_system/Rules.mk'.
make: Failed to remake makefile '/home/LINUX/company_system/Rules.mk'.
make: Nothing to be done for 'all'.
Objects:             0 failed 0 succeed 0 total
Build Completed!

Environment variable

You can set the environment variables before the build is executed.

-bash-5.1$ export BINLIB=LIAMA
-bash-5.1$ makei build
> make -k BUILDVARSMKPATH="/tmp/tmpcu8_632a" -k BOB="/QOpenSys/pkgs/lib/bob" -f "/QOpenSys/pkgs/lib/bob/mk/Makefile" all
/QOpenSys/pkgs/lib/bob/mk/Makefile:66: /home/LINUX/company_system/Rules.mk: No such file or directory
make: *** No rule to make target '/home/LINUX/company_system/Rules.mk'.
make: Failed to remake makefile '/home/LINUX/company_system/Rules.mk'.
make: Nothing to be done for 'all'.
Objects:             0 failed 0 succeed 0 total
Build Completed!

Understanding bob file types

BOB compiles objects based on what the extension is on the source.

For example:

.rpgle creates an RPGLE module
.pgm.rpgle creates an RPGLE program
.rpgleinc doesn’t create anything, but knows that it’s an include file (sometimes referred to as a copybook)
.dspf creates a display file object

It’s important to correct all extensions before contining to build with BOB.

Casing issues

BOB only supports extensions (compile targets) that are uppercase, and the source has to match the target. For the sake of simplicity, I changed all my source to be uppercase. Directory casing does not matter.

renamed:    qrpgleref/constants.rpgle -> qrpgleref/CONSTANTS.RPGLEINC
renamed:    qrpglesrc/depts.sqlrpgle -> qrpglesrc/DEPTS.PGM.SQLRPGLE
renamed:    qrpglesrc/employees.sqlrpgle -> qrpglesrc/EMPLOYEES.PGM.SQLRPGLE
renamed:    qddssrc/depts.dspf -> qddssrc/DEPTS.DSPF
renamed:    qddssrc/emps.dspf -> qddssrc/EMPLOYEES.DSPF
renamed:    qrpglesrc/mypgm.rpgle -> qrpglesrc/MYPGM.PGM.RPGLE

You can see the official issue for this on GitHub.

Creating your dependency list

For BOB projects, the root of your application source code (where the iproj.json is) also needs a Rules.mk file. This file lists all the directories with sources that get built into objects.

For the case of company_system:

SUBDIRS = qrpglesrc qddssrc

We need to put another Rules.mk file in the qrpglesrc directory. This file lists what each source in this file depends on being built before itself is, as well as a list of the programs to be built.

PGMs = DEPTS.PGM EMPLOYEES.PGM

DEPTS.PGM: DEPTS.FILE $(d)/DEPTS.PGM.SQLRPGLE
EMPLOYEES.PGM: EMPS.FILE $(d)/EMPLOYEES.PGM.SQLRPGLE

We put one more Rules.mk into qddssrc to tell BOB how to build the display files:

DSPFs = DEPTS.FILE EMPS.FILE

DEPTS.FILE: $(d)/DEPTS.DSPF
EMPS.FILE: $(d)/EMPS.DSPF

Log files

BOB creates a handful of useful files from the build.

.deps which has no purpose at the moment.
.evfevent contains the compiler errors, though they aren’t too human-readable.
.logs has the useful files:
- joblog.json which is the joblogs from the last build/compile
- output.log is all the spool files from the commands from the last build/compile

These folders belong in the .gitignore as they do not belong in the repository.

.deps
.evfevent
.logs

Building your application

TODO.