GiellaLT

GiellaLT provides an infrastructure for rule-based language technology aimed at minority and indigenous languages, and streamlines building anything from keyboards to speech technology. Read more about Why. See also How to get started, and our Privacy document.

Infrastructure maintenance

Below there are a couple of example tasks, and steps to take to realise them.

Task - modify an existing target

If you want to change the build procedure (e.g. to add or remove a new feature from a specific fst for all languages), work through this task.

Here is the procedure, with dictionary-include.am in am-shared as an example. The local directory am-shared is an exact copy of: $GTCORE/langs-templates/und/am-shared/

  1. Change dictionary-include.am locally (for your test language) and make sure everything works.
  2. copy your local dictionary-include.am to the und/am-shared/ directory
  3. write a checkin message in und/und.timestamp
  4. check in both dictionary-include.am and und.timestamp.
  5. cd $GTHOME/langs
  6. ./update-all-from-core.sh -t und
  7. check that things are working correctluy for 1-2 other languages
  8. when everything looks fine, check in all languages at once (but preferably only the changes coming from und/

Task - add a new fst type

When a new fst type is called for, the procedure is roughly the same as above, with a few additions. As an example, we will create a new fst for dictionary analysers (ie to be used for analysing input to dictionary lookup).

But first we need to answer the following question: where do we add the code for building the new fst? The idea so far has been to add default targets to the file am-shared/topdir-include.am, and optional targets (turned on via configure options) to separate include files such as dictionary-incluce.am. Generally this line will continue, but if the list of default targets grow too long, even those might be split out in separate include files.

For our example, we will edit dictionary-incluce.am. As always, edit in a local language dir first, to test that the new target works. When all is done and works fine, copy the modifications to the und template. Here are the steps to go through:

  1. edit am-shared/dictionary-incluce.am - the following steps will tell the system how to build the fst:
    1. add a new target analyser-dict-gt-desc.tmp.hfst 2. it is important that the target is named *.tmp.* to allow local overrides.
    2. write the build instructions for the language neutral parts of the build
    3. if language specific additions, changes or filters are required, these should be added to a separate *.tmp.hfst -> *.hfst target in the local Makefile.am (if no such changes are needed, *.tmp.hfst will just be copied to *.hfst).
    4. ensure that all filters required are actually built in the filters/ dir, and add dependencies to them all (such that the build will break properly if a filter is not available, and all required filters are rebuilt if needed).
  2. edit src/Makefile.am - the following steps will tell the system when to build the fst target:
    1. to tell the build system that we want a target to be built, it must be added to the variable GT_ANALYSERS_HFST (for hfst transducers).
    2. … but since we only want this transducer to be built when the user has explicitly requested dictionary fst’s, we need to wrap that variable assignment within a conditional: \ find the text if WANT_DICTIONARIES and within that if block, write the following:
      GT_ANALYSERS_HFST+=analyser-dict-gt-desc.hfst
      (the += part will add the new fst to the list of fst’s already assigned to the variable)
    3. if you need to make use of a new conditional, that requires some M4 work and will be covered in a separate tutorial
  3. test - remember to ./configure with the proper option
  4. if everything works as it should, copy to the und template, add a note in und.timestamp, and commit
  5. to populate all languages with the new feature, run $GTHOME/langs/update-all-from-core.sh -t und
  6. check that the new (and old) build(s) work(s) in a couple of languages - if everything is ok, commit all languages at once (but only the changes belonging to the new feature - it is best to merge with a clean version of the langs/ dir)

Task - add a new template

Task: add plx and Hunspell conversion to the new infra, but only for a limited set of languages (sma, smj, later sme).

Steps:

  1. create a new template, and populate it
  2. add template timestamp to the relevant languages
  3. add a plx option to the automake and autoconf files
  4. merge the template
  5. build and test
  6. fix bugs in the template, rerun from 3

The steps in detail

create a new template, and populate it

We want a new template named plxtools.

Then, we need to fill that template with the following content:

plxtools.timestamp
am-shared/plx-include.am            ## this is the real build file
tools/spellcheckers/plx/
                        Makefile.am ## includes plx-include.am
                        src/        ## shared src files - rsrc, rev, version
                        tmp/        ## large plx files, make clean safe

The Hunspell conversion is common to all languages, and is thus part of the und/ template. These parts need to be added to that template:

am-shared/regex-include.am           ## this is the real build file
tools/spellcheckers/filters/            ## move common filters in here
                            Makefile.am ## includes the usual regex-include.am

add template timestamp to the relevant languages

This is pretty simple:

cd $GTLANG
touch plxtools.timestamp
svn add plxtools.timestamp

As soon as the file is created, the merge script will pick take notice, and start merging files from that template to the language with the timestamp file for that template.

add a plx option to the automake and autoconf files

Both Hunspell and PLX spellers should by default not be built. To turn them on, one should use something like --enable-plx and --enable-hunspell. See the Oahpa ditto for a way of doing this.

merge the templates

Merge the template for a specific language as follows:

cd $GTLANG
../../giella-core/scripts/merge-templates.sh -t plxtools

That is, specify the template you want to merge using the -t option, both to avoid timeconsuming operations, and to avoid merging several unrelated things at the same time.

build and test

Essentially:

make
make check

and looking at the output.

fix bugs and redo

After the known bugs have been fixed, re-merge, test and evaluate. Iterate till everything works as planned.

Other issues

There are definitely a number of other issues. The goal is to have a portable build system with as few dependencies as possible, and with all dependencies checked for and reported properly to the user if missing.

These goals require that we follow the Autotools conventions, and use supported variables and macros where we earlier often used more homegrown solutions.

See the following sites for useful documentation and help:

Important pitfalls

Makefile debugging

Install make2graph

make -Bnd sma-mobile.zhfst | make2graph | dot -Tpng -o sma-mobile-dag.png

Result: a visual representation of the dependency graph, making it easy to spot wrong dependency chains, and where the problem most likely is.

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