.\" .\" cook - file construction tool .\" Copyright (C) 1997, 1998 Peter Miller; .\" All rights reserved. .\" .\" This program is free software; you can redistribute it and/or modify .\" it under the terms of the GNU General Public License as published by .\" the Free Software Foundation; either version 2 of the License, or .\" (at your option) any later version. .\" .\" This program is distributed in the hope that it will be useful, .\" but WITHOUT ANY WARRANTY; without even the implied warranty of .\" MERCHANTABILITY or FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE. See the .\" GNU General Public License for more details. .\" .\" You should have received a copy of the GNU General Public License .\" along with this program; if not, write to the Free Software .\" Foundation, Inc., 59 Temple Place, Suite 330, Boston, MA 02111, USA. .\" .\" MANIFEST: input for archive/cook.html .\" .ad l .hy 0 .so version.so Cook \*(v)

Cook \*(v)

Cook is a tool for constructing files. It is given a set of files to create, and recipes of how to create them. In any non-trivial program there will be prerequisites to performing the actions necessary to creating any file, such as include files. Cook provides a mechanism to define these. .br

When a program is being developed or maintained, the programmer will typically change one file of several which comprise the program. Cook examines the last-modified times of the files to see when the prerequisites of a file have changed, implying that the file needs to be recreated as it is logically out of date. .br

Cook also provides a facility for implicit recipes, allowing users to specify how to form a file with a given suffix from a file with a different suffix. For example, to create filename.o from filename.c .br

Cook has a simple but powerful string-based description language with many built-in functions. This allows sophisticated filename specification and manipulation without loss of readability or performance. .br
Cook is able to use fingerprints to supplement file modification times. This allows build optimization without contorted rules. .br
Cook is able to build your project with multiple parallel threads, with support for rules which must be single threaded. It is possible to distribute parallel builds over your LAN, allowing you to turn your network into a virtual parallel build engine. .br
Cook can be configured with an explicit list of primary source files. This allow the dependency graph to be constructed faster by not going down dead ends, and also allows better error messages when the graph can't be constructed. This requires an accurate source file manifest. .br

Cook runs on almost any flavor of UNIX. The source distribution is self configuring using a GNU Autoconf generated configure script. .br

See the README file for a description of the new features and bug-fixes in this release. This is also in the Cook Reference Manual, along with the build and installation instructions, and all of the manual pages. .br

Year 2000 Status

Cook does not suffer from Year 2000 problems.

Cook stores dates internally in Unix style (i.e. seconds offset), so internal storage of times and dates does not suffer from any Y2K problems.
Cook always uses the ANSI C standard strftime function to display times and dates. (This assumes that your vendor has supplied a compliant strftime.) This means that displaying dates does not assume fixed field widths, nor will it display the year 2000 as ``100''.
When a user enters dates, they may sprecify years with an explict century. If a user enters a year with an implicit century, the closest is assumed.

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Files for Download

File Name	Description
`cook-\*(v).README`	The `README` file from the tar distribution.
`cook-\*(v).lsm`	Brief description in .nf LSM .fi format.
`cook-\*(v).spec`	RedHat package manager specification file (RPM)
`cook-\*(v).tar.gz`	The complete source.
`cook-\*(v).rm.ps.gz`	Cook Reference Manual in PostScript format.
`cook-\*(v).ug.ps.gz`	Cook User Guide in PostScript format.

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Cook is also available from the Linux archives in the devel/make directory. .br

Cook is written and owned by Peter Miller and is freely distributable under the terms and conditions of the GNU GPL.

Cook is developed using Aegis, a transaction based software configuration management package.

There is more Software by Peter Miller at his home page. .br

This page has been accessed approximately .nf

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