Tibs ("Test Index Build System") is a simple and flexible build system designed for test projects of IndexStoreDB and SourceKit-LSP. Tibs can incrementally build or rebuild the index data and generated module files for a Swift and/or C-family language test project. Tibs can also dump the compiler arguments to a clang-compatible JSON compilation database. It is not designed to compile to executable code.
Tibs is implemented using Ninja, which introduces a new dependency in IndexStoreDB when running tests.
Tibs projects are described by a project.json
file containing one or more targets. Typically, a test case will use a project fixture located in the INPUTS
directory.
A Tibs project is described by project.json
manifest file. The top-level entity is a target, which may depend on other targets.
Example:
{
"targets": [
{
"name": "mytarget",
"swift_flags": ["-warnings-as-errors"],
"sources": ["a.swift", "b.swift"],
"dependencies": ["dep1"],
},
{
"name": "dep1",
"sources": ["dep1.swift"],
},
]
}
As a convenience, if the project consists of a single target, it can be written at the top level and the name can be omitted, e.g.
{ "sources": ["main.swift"] }
Targets have the following fields:
- "name": The name of the target. If omitted, it will be "main".
- "sources": Array of source file paths.
- "bridging_header": Optional path to a Swift bridging header.
- "dependencies": Optional array of target names that this target depends on. This is useful for Swift module dependencies.
- "swift_flags": Optional array of extra compiler arguments for Swift.
- "clang_flags": Optional array of extra compiler arguments for Clang.
The directory containing the project.json
manifest file is considered the project's root directory and any relative paths are relative to that.
Most tests using Tibs will use the APIs provided by the TibsTestWorkspace
class in the ISDBTestSupport
module, which provides a high-level API for working with a complete Tibs project. The following information is for anyone needing to work using the lower-level APIs from ISDBTibs
or the tibs
command-line tool.
At a high level, both the library and command-line interfaces for Tibs work similarly: given a project and toolchain (containing executables clang, swiftc, ninja, etc.), produce a Ninja build description file and a compilation database. When built using ninja
, all of the generated Swift modules are created and the raw index data is produced.
The TibsBuilder
class provides a library interface for building Tibs projects. It is responsible for fully resolving all the dependencies, build outputs, and compiler arguments. It also has APIs for executing the build using the ninja
command-line tool and outputting a compilation database (compile_commands.json
).
The inputs to the build process are a toolchain, project, and build directory.
import ISDBTibs
let toolchain = TibsToolchain(...)
let projectDir: URL = ...
let buildDir: URL = ...
We load the project.json
manifest from the project directory.
let manifest = try TibsManifest.load(projectRoot: projectDir)
From a manifest, we can create a TibsBuilder
and examine the fully resolved targets.
let builder = try TibsBuilder(
manifest: manifest,
sourceRoot: projectDir,
buildRoot: buildDir,
toolchain: toolchain)
for target in builder.targets {
...
}
Finally, we can write the build files and build, or incrementally rebuild the project's index data and modules.
try builder.writeBuildFiles()
try builder.build()
// edit sources
try builder.build()
As a convenience, we also provide a command-line interface tibs
. It uses the ISDBTibs
library to write out build files, which can then be built using ninja
.
Running tibs
will write out the necessary Ninja build file and compilation database.
mkdir build
cd build
tibs <path to project directory, containing project.json>
To execute the build, use the ninja
command
ninja
The build directory will be populated with the generated swift modules and index data.
The primary reason not to use the Swift Package Manager (SwiftPM) for our test projects is that SwiftPM's model is stricter than other build systems we need to support, and stricter than we want for our testing support. For example, we want to be able to test mixed language targets (using bridging headers), and to perform only the module-generation and indexing parts of the build without emitting object code. We need to be able to add features to our test support that would break the clean model that SwiftPM provides.