Make frontend programs relink after libpgfeutils changes

On Mon, Jun 15, 2026 at 3:29 PM Chao Li <li.evan.chao@gmail.com> wrote:

Hi,

I ran into some trouble while working on patch [1], where I changed
print.c and needed to rebuild psql. However, make silently didn't rebuild
psql after the print.c change. I wasn’t aware of that at first, and it
confused me and wasted quite a bit of time before I figured out what was
happening.

I tried a Meson build. Ninja automatically rebuilds 33 client tools after
print.c changes, so I changed make to automatically rebuild client tools in
the same way as Meson.

But then I found that there are actually 27 client tools that depend on
libpgfeutils.a. There are 6 client tools that don’t really require
libpgfeutils.a, but Meson still links the library to them. They are:

* pg_archivecleanup
* pg_config
* pg_controldata
* pg_ctl
* pg_test_fsync
* pg_test_timing

I want this patch to focus on make, and I am not as familiar with Meson as
I am with make, so I didn’t touch the Meson part.

With this patch, when something like print.c in libpgfeutils.a is changed,
all dependent client tools are automatically rebuilt.

See the attached patch for details. BTW, besides the client tools,
test_escape also depends on libpgfeutils.a, so I included it in the patch
as well.

[1]
/messages/by-id/A44110E7-6A03-4C67-95AD-527192A6C768@gmail.com

Best regards,
--
Chao Li (Evan)
HighGo Software Co., Ltd.
https://www.highgo.com/

Thanks for the patch. I even ran into the same trouble and got frustrated,
and ended up I switched to meson build. So I'd give a big +1 to fix the
problem for make users.

I tried the patch, and it works properly. But I see meson automatically
rebuilds some more tools than src/bin/ tools, such as
contrib/oid2name/oid2name, src/tools/pg_bsd_indent/pg_bsd_indent, etc., do
you plan to handle them also?

Regards,
Yingying Chen

On 2026-Jun-16, Yingying Chen wrote:

I tried the patch, and it works properly. But I see meson automatically
rebuilds some more tools than src/bin/ tools, such as
contrib/oid2name/oid2name, src/tools/pg_bsd_indent/pg_bsd_indent, etc., do
you plan to handle them also?

Hmm, isn't that bogus? oid2name at least doesn't depend on fe_utils as
far as I can see. Maybe meson is overeagerly inheriting that dependency
from somewhere else. If that's the case then we don't want Make to do
the same (though I don't dare suggest to clean up Meson not to.)

--
Álvaro Herrera 48°01'N 7°57'E — https://www.EnterpriseDB.com/

On Jun 16, 2026, at 20:44, Álvaro Herrera <alvherre@kurilemu.de> wrote:

On 2026-Jun-16, Yingying Chen wrote:

I tried the patch, and it works properly. But I see meson automatically
rebuilds some more tools than src/bin/ tools, such as
contrib/oid2name/oid2name, src/tools/pg_bsd_indent/pg_bsd_indent, etc., do
you plan to handle them also?

Hmm, isn't that bogus? oid2name at least doesn't depend on fe_utils as
far as I can see. Maybe meson is overeagerly inheriting that dependency
from somewhere else. If that's the case then we don't want Make to do
the same (though I don't dare suggest to clean up Meson not to.)

--
Álvaro Herrera 48°01'N 7°57'E — https://www.EnterpriseDB.com/

Thanks for your comments. Actually, I checked that while working on v1.

There are 15 non-src/bin tools that get rebuilt by meson:

* contrib/oid2name/oid2name
* contrib/vacuumlo/vacuumlo
* src/interfaces/ecpg/preproc/ecpg
* src/interfaces/ecpg/test/pg_regress_ecpg
* src/test/isolation/isolationtester
* src/test/isolation/pg_isolation_regress
* src/test/modules/libpq_pipeline/libpq_pipeline
* src/test/modules/oauth_validator/oauth_hook_client
* src/test/modules/test_escape/test_escape
* src/test/modules/test_int128/test_int128
* src/test/modules/test_json_parser/test_json_parser_incremental
* src/test/modules/test_json_parser/test_json_parser_perf
* src/test/regress/pg_regress
* src/timezone/zic
* src/tools/pg_bsd_indent/pg_bsd_indent

Only src/test/modules/test_escape/test_escape really depends on libpgfeutils.a, and I included it in v1. I think Meson may involve some broader dependency logic that causes the others to be relinked, but I don’t want to touch that part in this patch.

PFA v2, only rebased, and with the reviewer and discussion added to the commit message.

Best regards,
--
Chao Li (Evan)
HighGo Software Co., Ltd.
https://www.highgo.com/