How to list orphaned recipes?

[gruberchr]

Is there an opportunity to list orphaned recipes, i.e., recipes in the recipes directory that are independent of any root recipe?

We use a workflow with multiple recipes for different versions of the same software module or application in parallel. Now, we want to remove some of the older versions' recipes and try to identify the complete recipe tree of older module versions that only depend on outdated application (root) recipes to be removed. Our first idea was to remove the desired application (root) recipes first and then remove all module recipes, which got orphaned afterwards.

Perhaps there is another way to identify the recipe trees to be removed. We know that there is an extensive query language to specify paths to Bob packages. However, it's hard to see how this could help here.

[jkloetzke]

The path query language is used to find packages and not recipes. But it can still be the first step into this direction. There is the query-recipe command that is intended to get the file names of all involved classes and recipes of a package. Unfortunately, it does not understand the generic paths yet. But that can certainly be has been fixed (see #648). The basic idea would be that you do a

bob query-path '//*'

to query the YAML files of all packages. It will output the file names of all used recipes (and classes). This file name list can then be compared to all existing recipes. The set difference is probably exactly what you need.

[gruberchr]

The basic idea would be that you do a bob query-path '//*' to query the YAML files of all packages.

Do you mean bob query-recipe instead of bob query-path?

If I understand this correctly, the aim of this procedure is to obtain two lists of recipe file names that can be compared to identify the recipe files to remove. But actually, we need more precise information, since many recipe files contain several recipes (recipe variants) defined with multiPackage for different versions of a software module. Therefore, we want to know the complete recipe names, not only the recipe file names.

[jkloetzke]

Do you mean bob query-recipe instead of bob query-path?

Of course.

If I understand this correctly, the aim of this procedure is to obtain two lists of recipe file names that can be compared to identify the recipe files to remove. But actually, we need more precise information, since many recipe files contain several recipes (recipe variants) defined with multiPackage for different versions of a software module. Therefore, we want to know the complete recipe names, not only the recipe file names.

I see. That is indeed not possible so far. The package queries can only reach packages that are referenced somehow by a root recipe. I quickly prototyped a command that prints the names of all recipes that are known -> #649 . That list could be compared with the list of all used recipes: bob ls -d '//*' | sed -e 's|.*/||' | sort -u. That should give you a list of recipes that are currently unused:

comm -3 <(bob ls-recipes | sort -u) <(bob ls -d '//*' | sed -e 's|.*/||' | sort -u)

Obviously, the ls-recipes command could do more (optionally show file names, layers, base recipe name vs. multiPackage suffix). But hopefully we're getting closer. 😉

[gruberchr]

Okay, I understand. Currently implemented Bob commands, like query-recipe or ls, work on packages, not on recipes, and packages always require a root recipe. That means these commands do not have access to orphaned recipes, although Bob parses all recipes, including orphaned ones. Therefore, to provide information on orphaned recipes, a new Bob command working on recipes not on packages, like for instance ls-recipes, would have to be introduced.

Looks like a new feature. If you're planning to implement such a new command, we'd certainly appreciate it. 🙂

I tested its prototype provided with #649, and I can confirm that this would fill the gap for identifying orphaned recipes. Maybe the new command could also provide an option such as --orphaned to list orphaned recipes directly.

[jkloetzke]

So we now have an ls-recipes command that lists recipes. Together with the --orphaned option it prints all recipes that are not used as packages.

[gruberchr]

Great, thanks.