Surface compiler flags for a given platform

[ianfixes]

Feature Request

arduino_ci has logic for building Arduino libraries with mocked hardware.
Part of this is setting the proper compiler #define values for a given board, which I currently hard code in a yaml file. __AVR_ATmega328P__ becomes the compiler flag -D__AVR_ATmega328P__, and so on.

I'd like a way to ask arduino-cli for these instead, if possible.

[matthijskooijman]

This seems challenging to implement.

One problem is that arduino-cli doesn't really know about compiler flags. It knows about all kinds of variables which it collects from various places (platform.txt, boards.txt, compiler commandline, maybe even some builtin defaults or backward compatibility fixups). Then, to run the compiler, it takes a "recipe" from platform.txt and instantiates it with all collected variables. This produces the complete commandline, not just the defines, or just compiler flags, etc. There are likely some of these variables that might be relevant (i.e. a variable that contains all compiler flags or all defines), but (names of) these variables are not standardized, only the recipe that generates the full commandline.

So, that means that at best arduino-cli could give you all the relevant variables for a given board, or the complete compiler commandline for a given board and source file. If you know how the platform.txt for a given platform is written, you might be able to extract the flags you need from specific variables, but this needs platform-specific configuration Arduino-CI and might need changes to the platform (e.g. the AVR core has no separate variable for the defines you would need, they are coded directly into the recipe).

Regarding the specific example you give, __AVR_ATmega328P__, that is even more tricky, since the compiler commandline only has -mmcu=m328p or something like that, which gcc interprets by defining __AVR_ATmega328P__. So that define is simply unknown to arduino-cli and platform.txt. You could maybe run gcc with options to let it print all (pre)defined macros, but then you'll probably get a lot more than you need and run into problems again if you do not have a long list of macros you need to filter out (and then you're probably better off just hardcoding the macros you need in the first place...)

[ianfixes]

OH! That line from the recipe is a perfect illustration of what I'm after!

recipe.c.o.pattern="{compiler.path}{compiler.c.cmd}" {compiler.c.flags} -mmcu={build.mcu} -DF_CPU={build.f_cpu} -DARDUINO={runtime.ide.version} -DARDUINO_{build.board} -DARDUINO_ARCH_{build.arch} {compiler.c.extra_flags} {build.extra_flags} {includes} "{source_file}" -o "{object_file}"

Just being able to get ahold of the contents of compiler, build, includes, etc (as a JSON object, with all their sub-properties) would be a huge boost for me -- it will show me which variables are being set at the "top level", and make it easier for me to navigate the rest of the platform libraries.

I assume surfacing this info is as easy as copying the process for examples compilation -- then instead of plugging the data into the recipe and running the compiler, just print out any & all variables that a typical recipe would access. Is that more reasonable?

[matthijskooijman]

I assume surfacing this info is as easy as copying the process for examples compilation -- then instead of plugging the data into the recipe and running the compiler, just print out any & all variables that a typical recipe would access. Is that more reasonable?

Yup, that's probably easy to implement. Not sure what the (CLI or GRPC) interface for this would look like exactly, though (and I'm not familiar enough with the code to really suggest anything or be really sure that this is indeed easy :-p).

There is some work on creating a compilation database as a side effect of compilation (see #1081), which might be an ideal interface for what you need. From that PR, it seems @cmaglie even added an option to generate just a compilation database without actually running the compilation commands (except for the preprocessor for library detection)? OTOH you might need a little more high-level view of the various flags, extracting them from a compilation database might require a bit of reverse engineering maybe?

[ianfixes]

Linking Arduino-CI/arduino_ci#242 for visibility. I'm hopeful that this sort of feature would support a more robust approach to defining board constants during mock compilation

[umbynos]

Hi @ianfixes, unfortunately this cannot be done since it's compiler dependent.