NAME
aesub - aegis command substitutions
DESCRIPTION
When other programs are invoked by the aegis program, it is usually via
a command string in a configuration file. This section describes the
format of these command strings.
GENERAL FORM
The command strings are very similar to shell variables. An example
will illustrate this:
build_command =
"cook project=${project} change=${change}";
In this command definition, the "${project}" part is a substitution:
the name of the project will be substituted in the command at this
point.
Substitutions may take several forms:
$name
This is the same as saying "${name}". The name must start with
an alphabetic, and be followed by zero or more alphanumerics.
${name}
The name in this form may contain any non-blank characters, and
it may be subject to substitution.
${name arg...}
The name and the arguments in this form may contain any non-
blank characters, and it may be subject to further
substitution. Within the braces ({ and }) pairs of single
quote characters (’blah blah’) may be used to insulate spaces
and other special characters, or you may use the back quote (\)
to escape a single character.
$$
This is replaced by a single $ character. It avoid RCS
expansions, you can also use ${$}.
%%
This is replaced by a single % character. Percent (%) followed
by anything else is illegal.
$#...\n This is a comment, usually found in template files read in
using the ${read_file} substitution. It consumes all
characters up to and including the next newline. (See also
${comment}, below.)
As another example, the dirname substitution is replaced by the
directory name of the argument, rather like the dirname(1) command. In
the command
history_query_command =
"get -t -g ${Dirname $History}/s.${Basename $History}";
the Dirname and Basename substitutions are used to construct a suitable
path to the SCCS file in the history directory.
ABBREVIATIONS
The names of the various substitutions may be abbreviated. In the
above examples, and in the lists which follow, the minimum abbreviation
is the uppercase letters. All substitution name are case insensitive.
The above example could be abbreviated to
history_query_command =
"get -t -g ${d $h}/s.${b $h}";
Ambiguous abbreviations will result in a fatal error message.
SUBSTITUTIONS
There are many substitutions which are always understood, and some
which are specific to the command being substituted. Specific entries
will be defined in the relevant manual section.
The following lists contains those substitutions which are always
understood:
Active_Directory
The absolute path of the change’s development directory, if the
change is between the being developed and awaiting integration
states. The absolute path of the change’s integration
directory, if the change is in the being integrated state. Not
available when the change is in the awaiting development or
completed states. This rather like the default behaviour of
the aecd(1) command.
Add_Path_Suffix
This substitution may be used to add a suffix to each element
of a colon-separated path list. The first argument is the
suffix to use, the second and subsequent arguments are the
colon-separated paths to work on. The result is a single colon
separated path. Often used in combination with the
${search_path} substitution, below.
Administrator_List
Space separated list of the project’s administrators. Takes an
optional argument in the same form as the user substitution.
ARCHitecture
This substitution is replaced by the architecture name
appropriate for the current execution environment. Requires no
arguments. See the architecture field of aepconf(5) for more
information. When used in commands, you may need to surround
this substitution with the quote substitution (see below), if
any of your architecture names contain shell special
characters.
BaseLine
Absolute path of the the project’s baseline.
Basename
This substitution takes one argument, a pathname. The value of
the substitution will be the last element of the pathname.
This is similar to the basename(1) command.
BAse_RElative
This substitution takes at least one pathname. The value of
the substitution is the base-relative filenames, with any
change-specific or project baseline specific leading path
removed. The file does not have to be a project source file.
(This is almost the inverse of the $source substitution,
below.)
BINary_DIRectory
The absolute path of Aegis’ architecture-specific binary
(executables) directory. This corresponds to the “./configure
-bindir” option when Aegis was built. This is where most of
the Aegis executable programs are installed.
CAPitalize
This substitution takes at least one argument. The value of
the substitution will be the arguments with the first letter of
each word forced to upper case and the rest forced to lower
case.
Change
This substitution provides various information about the
change, based on the argument it is given.
attribute
This substitution takes an additional argument, the name
of a change attribute (see aeca(1) and aecattr(5) for
more information). This returns the value listed in the
change attributes, or the empty string if the change
does not have the named attribute.
cause This returns the cause of the change.
date format
This returns the completion date of the change. See
DATE section for additional arguments.
delta This returns the delta number of the change. Only
valid for completed changes.
delta_uuid
This returns the delta UUID of the change, assigned on
integrate pass, a globally unique identifier for the
state of the project when this change was integrated
(different for all repositories). Only valid for
being_integrated and completed changes.
description
This returns the brief description of the change.
developer
This returns the name of the developer of the change.
development_directory
This returns the development directory of the change.
integrator
This returns the name of the integrator of the change.
integration_directory
This returns the integration directory of the change.
number This returns the number of the change. (This is the
default if no argument is given.)
reviewer
This returns the name of the reviewer of the change.
state This returns the state of the change.
uuid This returns the UUID of the change.
version This returns the version of the change.
Change_Attribute
This substitution takes exactly one argument. This argument is
a name of a change attribute (see aeca(1) and aecattr(5) for
more information). This returns the value listed in the change
attributes, or the empty string if the change does not have the
named attribute.
Change_Files
This is replaced by a space separated list of change file
names. There are several qualifying arguments you can give to
this substitution:
action You may give one or more file actions (e.g. modify).
Only files with one of the actions will be returned.
By default, all file actions are returned.
type You may give one or more file types (e.g. source).
Only files with one of the types will be returned. By
default, all file types are returned.
not Inverts the sense of operations. For example
${change_files not remove} will return the names of all
change files not being removed.
quote This does not affect which file are selected, but it
causes the file names to be quoted if they contain
shell meta-characters.
If you specify both actions and types, only files both
qualifiers will be returned. For example ${change_files modify
test} will return only the names of automatic test files which
are being modified.
Change_Developer_List
Space separated list of all the change’s developers. Note that
this is different than the Developer_List substitution.
Change_Reviewer_List
Space separated list of the change’s reviewers since the last
develop end. Note that this is different than the Reviewer_‐
List substitution. Bt using the review_policy_command field of
the project configuration file this value can have more than
one reviewer, because this allows a project to require a change
to need to be reviewed more than once before it can be
integrated.
COMment
Inserts exactly nothing; any and all arguments are ignored.
Another form of comment is “$#” which extends to the end of the
current line.
Copyright_Years
Inserts a comma separated list of copyright years from the
project attributes. This list of years is maintained by aegis
at integrate begin, and so is only guaranteed to be up-to-date
in the’being integrated’ state. Do not use this substitution
in new file templates, it is not guaranteed to be up-to-date in
the ’being developed’ state; use the ${date %Y} substitution in
new file templates.
This list contains spaces, so if you use it to build commands,
you will probably need to quote, it as well.
DATa_DIRectory
The absolute path of Aegis’ architecture-neutral library
directory. This corresponds to the “./configure -datadir”
option when Aegis was built. This is where most of the scripts
included with Aegis are installed.
DAte
With no arguments, the output is the current date. If there
are arguments, they form a format string. This is similar to
the date(1) command on many UNIX systems. For a description of
the date formats, see the DATE section, below.
DELta
The delta number of the change. This is only available when
the change is in the being integrated state or the completed
state.
DEVeloper
The name of the developer. Takes an optional argument in the
same form as the user substitution.
DEVeloper_List
Space separated list of the project’s developers. Takes an
optional argument in the same form as the user substitution.
Note that this is different than the Change_DeveloperList
substitution.
Development_Directory
The absolute path of the change’s development directory. Only
available when the change is between the being developed state
and the being integrated state.
DIFF
The absolute path of the diff command, as discovered when Aegis
was built. It tries to locate GNU Diff at build time to
provide maximum functionality.
Dirname
This substitution takes at least one argument, a pathname. The
value of the substitution will be everything but the last
element of the pathname. This is similar to the dirname(1)
command.
Dirname_RELative
This substitution takes at least one argument, a pathname. The
value of the substitution will be everything but the last
element of the pathname. This is similar to the dirname
substitution, except that if there are no directory components,
it returns dot (“.”).
DownCase
This substitution takes at least one argument. The value of
the substitution will be the argument with any upper case
letters mapped to lower case.
EMail_Address
This substitution takes one or more user names as arguments.
It replaces them with email addresses. (It is an error if any
user name is unknown.)
This substitution takes options. You may specify one or more
of them immediately after the substitution name.
-Comma This option may be used to specify that the email
addresses are to be separated by commas.
-Quote This option may be used to specify that the email
addresses are to be quoted to insulate shell special
characters.
See aeuconf(5) for where this is set.
ENVironment
This substitution takes at least one argument. The value of
the substitution is the value of the corresponding environment
variable, or empty of undefined.
ERrno
This substitution takes no arguments. The value of the
substitution will be the value if the errno variable provided
by the system, as mapped through the strerror function. Thus
you may give the users informative system error messages.
EXpression
This substitution evaluates simple arithmetic expressions.
Addition, subtraction, division, multiplication, modulo and
negation are understood. The 6 basic comparison operators are
available. The usual C syntax and precedence are used. The
arguments must constitute a valid expression, white space and
word boundaries are ignored.
History_Directory
This substitution takes zero arguments. It is replaced by the
absolute path of the history directory of the project.
History_Path
This substitution takes one argument, the name of a source
file. It is replaced by the absolute path of the history file
for that source file. Note that you may beed to massage the
file name a little for you proticular history tool, just as the
history commands in the aegis.conf file do.
This substitution takes zero arguments. It is replaced by the
absolute path of the history directory of the project.
IDentifier
This substitution takes at least one argument. The value of
the substitution will be the argument with all characters but
alpha numerics mapped into an underscore (_), so as to form a
legal C identifier.
INTegration_Directory
The absolute path of the change’s integration directory. Only
available when the change is in the being integrated state.
INTegrator
The name of the change’s integrator. Only available when the
change is in the being integrated state or the completed state.
Takes an optional argument in the same form as the user
substitution.
INTegrator_List
Space separated list of the project’s integrators. Takes an
optional argument in the same form as the user substitution.
LEFt This substitution extracts the left hand side of strings. It
takes two arguments: the first is the string, the second is the
number of characters.
LENgth This substitution determines the length of strings, the result
is a number. It takes one argument: the string to be measured.
LIBrary
The absolute path of Aegis’ library directory. This
corresponds to the “./configure -datadir” option when Aegis was
built. This substitution is deprecated - please use ${datadir}
instead.
LIBrary_DIRectory
The absolute path of Aegis’ architecture-specific library
directory. This corresponds to the “./configure -libdir”
option when Aegis was built.
Name_Maximum
This substitution is used to get the maximum file name length
within a file system. It takes at least one argument: the name
of a directory within the file system. Frequently used with
${left} to crop filenames to the file system maximum.
PAth_Reduce
This function requires at least one argument. It is used to
remove duplicates from a command search path, such as may be
found in the PATH environment variable. If more than one
argument is given, all are included in the results, as if they
were separated by colons.
PERL This function requires zero arguments. It is replaced by the
absolute path of a Perl interpreter.
PLural
This function requires 2 or 3 arguments. The first argument is
evaluated as a number, if it is plural (not equal to 1) the
second argument is the result, otherwise the third argument is
the result (or empty if not given). This is mostly used to
pluralize sentences in Germainic error messages.
PLural_Forms
The plural_forms substitution is similar to the ${plural}
substitution, except that it reads and understands the Plural-
Forms: header in the message catalogue. This means that it
understands a greater range of pluralization mechanisms than
the simple ${plural} substitution. (For a description of the
Plural-Forms: header, see the GNU Gettext manual.)
The first argument is the number. Second is the singular form
(corresponding to the Plural-Forms: expression evaluating to
zero), the third and subsequent arguments are the various
plural forms (corresponding to the Plural-Forms: expression
evaluating to 1, 2, 3, etc.
The Plural-Forms: expression is required evaluate to less than
nplurals. If it does not, the second argument (the singular
form) is used. If there are too few arguments to this
substitution, the second argument (the singular form) is again
used.
Note that in the default case (used for English and other
Germanic languages), the arguments are the reverse of those
expected by the ${plural} substitution.
Project
This substitution provides various information about the
project, based on the argument it is given.
name This returns the name of the project. (This is the
default if no argument is given.)
description
This returns the description of the project (the one
which appears in the project listing).
trunk_name
This returns the name of the trunk of the project (i.e.
no branch numbers included).
trunk_description
This returns the description of the trunk of the
project.
version This returns the version of the project.
version_long
This returns the version of the project, including the
delta number.
Project_Specific
This substitution takes exactly one argument. This argument is
a name to be found in the project configuration file’s
project_specific field (see aepconf(5) for more information).
This returns the value listed in the project configuration
file. Unknown attributes will be replaced with the empty
string.
QUote
This substitution may be used to quote shell special
characters. If no quoting is required, not quotes will be
inserted. This is used to insulate shell special characters in
filenames when forming commands.
Read_File
Read a file and substitute the contents of the file. Requires
exactly one argument, the pathname of the file to be read. If
the pathname is a project source file, you will need to use the
source substitution to resolve the path. It is a fatal error
if the file does not exist, or is not readable. It is a fatal
error if the pathname is not absolute (because the current
directory is undefined).
Read_File_Simple
Read a file and without substituting the contents of the file.
Requires exactly one argument, the pathname of the file to be
read. If the pathname is a project source file, you will need
to use the source substitution to resolve the path. It is a
fatal error if the file does not exist, or is not readable. It
is a fatal error if the pathname is not absolute (because the
current directory is undefined).
Reviewer
The name of the change’s reviewer. Only available when the
change is between the awaiting integration state and the
completed state. Takes an optional argument in the same form
as the user substitution.
Reviewer_List
Space separated list of the project’s reviewers. Takes an
optional argument in the same form as the user substitution.
Note that this is different than the Change_Reviewer_List
substitution.
RIght This substitution extracts the right hand side of strings. It
takes two arguments: the first is the string, the second is the
number of characters.
Search_Path
The Search_Path substitution is replaced by a colon separated
list of absolute paths to search when building a change, it
will point from a change to its branch and so on up to the
project trunk.
Search_Path_Executable
The Search_Path_Executable substitution is usually the same as
the Search_Path substitution. However, during an “aegis -Test
-BaseLine” command, it contains the baseline as the first
element, rather then the development directory or the
integration directory. This is of most use when looking for
executables and executable support files while running tests.
SHell
The absolute path of a Bourne shell which understands
functions. Requires exactly zero arguments.
Source
Resolve the argument filename into a pathname. It is an error
if the file is not a source file. An optional second argument
may be "Absolute" or "Relative", and may be abbreviated.
Relative will attempt to provide a development-directory-
relative pathname whenever possible, absolute will always
result in an absolute path. The default is "Relative". (For
the inverse mapping, see ${BAse_RElative}, above.)
SPLit This substitution may be used to split strings are specified
separators. The first argument is the separator character to
be used, subsequent arguments are strings to be split. The
result is the collection is split strings of the second a
follwoing arguments, separated by spaces.
STate
The state the current change is in. It is an error if the
substitution does not refer to a change.
SUBSTitute
Regular expression substitution. The first argument is the
pattern to match, the second argument is the replacement
string. The third and subsequent arguments are modified as
specified by the first two arguments. The search is not
anchored, and the replacement will happen as many times as
possible. Use “^” to match the beginning, and “$” to match the
end.
SUBSTRing
This substitution extracts a substring from the middle of
strings. It takes three arguments: the first is the string,
the second is the star character (counting from zero), the
third is the number of characters.
SWitch
Select amongst a set of values. The first argument is expected
to be a number. If the number is zero, the second argument is
used; if the number is one, the third argument is used; etc.
If the number is negative, or exceeds the available arguments,
the last argument is used.
Trim_DIRectory
This substitution takes one or two arguments. If given one
argument, one directory component (if present) is removed from
the argument, which is assumed to be a file name. If two
arguments are present, the first is a directory count; at most
this many directory components (if present) will be removed.
The base file name is always left.
Trim_EXTension
This substitution takes one argument. Any file name extension
(a dot characters and the characters following) will be removed
from the final filename section of the argument.
UNSplit This substitution may be used to reverse the effects of the
split substitution. The first arguments is a seaparator
character, the second and following arguments are strings to be
joined together using the separator character. The result is a
single string.
UpCase
This substitution takes at least one argument. The value of
the substitution will be the argument with any lower case
letters mapped to upper case.
USer
This substitution provides various information about the user
who executed the command, based on the argument it is given.
login The login name of the user. (This is the default if no
argument is given.)
name The full name of the user.
email The email address of the user.
quoted_email
The email address of the user, quoted to avoid shell
special characters.
home The home directory of the user.
Version
The version of the change. If the change is in the being
integrated state or the completed state, the version will be of
the form "a.b.Dddd", where "a" is the project’s major version
number, "b" is the project’s minor version number, and "ddd" is
the change’s delta number. If the change is in any other
state, the version will be of the form "a.b.Cccc", where "ccc"
is the change number.
delta_uuid
This variant gives the change’s delta-UUID assigned at
integrate pass. Only valid for being_integrated and
completed changes.
Zero_Pad
This substitution is used to zero pad a string on the left. It
takes two arguments: the first is the string to be padded, the
second is the minimum string width.
DATE
This section describes the format specifiers accepted by the date
substitution. These are the same specifiers as defined by the ANSI C
standard for the strftime function.
%% The percent character (%)
%a the abbreviated weekday name
%A the full weekday name
%b the abbreviated month name
%B the full month name
%c the date and time
%d the day of the month, zero padded
%H the hour of the 24-hour day
%I the hour of the 12-hour day
%j the day number of year, zero padded, one based
%m the month of the year, zero padded, one based
%M the minute of the hour, zero padded
%p meridian indicator, AM or PM as appropriate
%S the second of the minute
%U the Sunday week of the year
%w the day of the week, Sunday is 0
%W the Monday week of the year
%x the date, as mmm dd yyyy
%X the time, as hh:mm:ss
%y the year of the century
%Y the year including the century
%Z time zone abbreviation
Using an undefined format specifier will produce random results,
depending on the version of UNIX you are on.
SEE ALSO
aesub(1)
Substitute and print strings.
COPYRIGHT
aegis version 4.24.3.D001
Copyright (C) 1991, 1992, 1993, 1994, 1995, 1996, 1997, 1998, 1999,
2000, 2001, 2002, 2003, 2004, 2005, 2006, 2007, 2008, 2009, 2010 Peter
Miller
The aegis program comes with ABSOLUTELY NO WARRANTY; for details use
the ’aegis -VERSion License’ command. This is free software and you
are welcome to redistribute it under certain conditions; for details
use the ’aegis -VERSion License’ command.
AUTHOR
Peter Miller E-Mail: millerp@canb.auug.org.au
/\/\* WWW: http://www.canb.auug.org.au/~millerp/