// Copyright 2014 The Bazel Authors. All rights reserved.
//
// Licensed under the Apache License, Version 2.0 (the "License");
// you may not use this file except in compliance with the License.
// You may obtain a copy of the License at
//
// http://www.apache.org/licenses/LICENSE-2.0
//
// Unless required by applicable law or agreed to in writing, software
// distributed under the License is distributed on an "AS IS" BASIS,
// WITHOUT WARRANTIES OR CONDITIONS OF ANY KIND, either express or implied.
// See the License for the specific language governing permissions and
// limitations under the License.
package com.google.devtools.build.lib.rules;
import com.google.devtools.build.lib.actions.ActionAnalysisMetadata;
import com.google.devtools.build.lib.analysis.ConfiguredTarget;
import com.google.devtools.build.lib.analysis.RuleContext;
import com.google.devtools.build.lib.packages.RuleClass;
/**
* A shortcut class to the appropriate specialization of {@code RuleClass.ConfiguredTargetFactory}.
*
* <p>Here follows an overview of how loading and analysis works in Bazel:
*
* <p>Actions (i.e. commands that are run during the build) are created by configured targets
* (see {@link ConfiguredTarget}), which are a pair of a target (e.g. <code>//src:bazel</code>) and
* a {@link com.google.devtools.build.lib.analysis.config.BuildConfiguration}, which is a blob of
* data that contains extra information about how the target should be built (for example, for which
* platform or with which C++ preprocessor definitions). Accordingly, a target can give rise to
* multiple configured targets, for example, if it needs to be built both for the host and the
* target configuration.
*
* <p>The process of creating the appropriate {@link com.google.devtools.build.lib.actions.Action}s
* for a configured target is called "analysis". The analysis of a configured target is composed of
* the following steps (which process is orchestrated by
* {@link com.google.devtools.build.lib.skyframe.ConfiguredTargetFunction}):
* <ol>
* <li>The corresponding {@link com.google.devtools.build.lib.packages.Target} is loaded, i.e.
* the BUILD file is parsed.</li>
* <li>Its direct dependencies are analyzed, during which in turn indirect dependencies are
* also analyzed.</li>
* <li>Aspects specified by the configured target are analyzed. These can be thought of as
* visitations of the transitive dependencies of the target. For more information, see
* {@link com.google.devtools.build.lib.packages.AspectClass}.
* <li>The configured target and the actions it generates are created based on the data from the
* previous two steps.</li>
* </ol>
*
* Targets can be of three main kinds (plus a few special ones which are not important for
* understanding the big picture):
* <p>
* <li>Input and output files. These represent either a file that is in the source tree or a
* file produced by during the build. Not every file produced during the build has a
* corresponding output file target.</li>
* <li>Rules. These describe things a build actually does. Each rule has a class (e.g.
* <code>cc_binary</code>). Rule classes can be defined either in Skylark using the
* <code>rule()</code> function or in Java code by implementing
* {@link com.google.devtools.build.lib.analysis.RuleDefinition}.</li>
* </p>
* <p>During the analysis of a configured target, the following pieces of data are available:
* <ul>
* <li>The corresponding target itself. This is necessary so that the analysis has access to e.g.
* the attributes a rule has in the BUILD file.</li>
* <li>The {@link com.google.devtools.build.lib.analysis.TransitiveInfoCollection}s of direct
* dependencies. They are used to gather information from the transitive closure, for example,
* the include path entries for C++ compilation or all the object files that need to be
* compiled into a C++ binary.</li>
* <li>The configuration, which is used to determine which compiler to use and to get access
* to some command line options of Bazel that influence analysis.</li>
* <li>Skyframe, for requesting arbitrary Skyframe nodes. This is an escape hatch that should be
* used when other mechanisms provided are not suitable and allows one to e.g. read arbitrary
* files. With great power...
* </ul>
*
* <p>Analysis of non-rule configured targets is special-cased and is not covered here.
*
* <p>The analysis of a rule itself is done by implementations {@link RuleConfiguredTargetFactory}
* (there should be one for each rule class). The data above is available using the
* {@link RuleContext} argument passed into its create() method. It should
* result in three things:
* <ul>
* <li>A set of actions. These should be passed to
* {@link RuleContext#registerAction(ActionAnalysisMetadata...)}, although for more
* common cases (e.g. {@link com.google.devtools.build.lib.analysis.actions.SpawnAction}),
* shortcuts are provided.</li>
* <li>A set of artifacts (files produced by actions). These should be created using methods of
* {@link RuleContext}. Each artifact thus created must have a generating action.</li>
* <li>A set of {@link com.google.devtools.build.lib.analysis.TransitiveInfoProvider}s that are
* passed on to direct dependencies. These must be registered using
* {@link com.google.devtools.build.lib.analysis.RuleConfiguredTargetBuilder#add(
* Class, com.google.devtools.build.lib.analysis.TransitiveInfoProvider)}
* </li>
* </ul>
*
* <p>Configured targets are currently allowed to create artifacts at any exec path. It would be
* better if they could be constrained to a subtree based on the label of the configured target,
* but this is currently not feasible because multiple rules violate this constraint and the
* output format is part of its interface.
*
* <p>In principle, multiple configured targets should not create actions with conflicting
* outputs. There are still a few exceptions to this rule that are slated to be eventually
* removed, we have provisions to handle this case (Action instances that share at least one
* output file are required to be exactly the same), but this does put some pressure on the design
* and we are eventually planning to eliminate this option.
*
* <p>These restrictions together make it possible to:
* <ul>
* <li>Correctly cache the analysis phase; by tightly constraining what a configured target is
* allowed to access and what it is not, we can know when it needs to invalidate a particular
* one and when it can reuse an already existing one.
* <li>Serialize / deserialize individual configured targets at will, making it possible for
* example to swap out part of the analysis state if there is memory pressure or to move them in
* persistent storage so that the state can be reconstructed at a different time or in a
* different process. The stretch goal is to eventually facilitate cross-user caching of this
* information.
* </ul>
*
*/
public interface RuleConfiguredTargetFactory
extends RuleClass.ConfiguredTargetFactory<ConfiguredTarget, RuleContext> {
}