Response files for RC files

Development
1

Hello,

we have hit once again the great wall of too long paths on Windows. This time, it is due to resource files. We use ninja as a generator. The command line to compile RC files looks like:

C:\Path\mingw64\bin\windres.exe -O coff -DSOME_DEFINE_1 -DSOME_DEFINE_2 -I ... -I ... -I ... c:/Path2/build/.../SomeLib.rc

The target has a long list of include directories (-I …), and they are passed as absolute paths, which leads quickly to a command line that is longer than 8192 characters, the upper limit.

The tool executed is windres.exe, from the MinGW toolchain. windres supports resource files:

Usage: C:\Path\mingw64\bin\windres.exe [option(s)] [input-file] [output-file]
The options are:
  ...
  @<file>                      Read options from <file>
  ...

It appears to be some undocumented options to enable response files:

    set(CMAKE_C_USE_RESPONSE_FILE_FOR_OBJECTS   TRUE)
    set(CMAKE_CXX_USE_RESPONSE_FILE_FOR_OBJECTS TRUE)
    set(CMAKE_NINJA_FORCE_RESPONSE_FILE         TRUE)

But it has no effect when building for resource files. Looking at the CMake source code, namely Source/cmNinjaTargetGenerator.cxx, the behavior seems hard coded:

  bool const lang_supports_response = lang != "RC";
  if (lang_supports_response && this->ForceResponseFile()) {
    ...

Also hard coded is to use absolute paths:

  std::string includeFlags = this->LocalGenerator->GetIncludeFlags(
    includes, this->GeneratorTarget, language, config, false,
    // full include paths for RC needed by cmcldeps
    language == "RC" ? cmLocalGenerator::IncludePathStyle::Absolute
                     : cmLocalGenerator::IncludePathStyle::Default);

I found a workaround. Instead of adding the RC file as source to the target, I created a custom command that calls windres without the include paths, which are not necessary in our case.

Questions out of curiosity:

  • what would it take to support response files for RC files as well? e.g. what needs to be done concretely?
  • is there any reason why the CMAKE_RESPONSE_FILE files are not documented?

Thanks,
Olivier

2

I fixed an issue years ago around this code. Digging in there might find some interesting bits. See also this commit and its associated issues.

This commit message contains the rationale for the current exclusion.

IIRC, one of the main issues is that the cmcldeps tool needs to take response files passed in, rewrite them as needed, then call the underlying tool with the new response file. See this issue.

3

Interesting, thanks for the feedback!