Compile Commands Database GENerator

About

A Python script to generate a compile_commands.json database by capturing the output of make. This script was originally created to provide compilation databases for make based C/C++ projects in Visual Studio Code.

Installation

Latest PyPi release

pip install ccdgen

Usage

python3 -m ccdgen --extensions <arguments...> -- <your build command>

Arguments:

Option	Default	Description
-h, --help		Show help message and exit
-c, --compiler	(auto detect)	Specify compiler
-d, --dir	./	Working directory to run make from
-e, --extensions		Extension(s) for source files
-o, --output	./compile_commands.json	Output file

For example, to run make all as the build command for a C project:

python3 -m ccdgen --extensions .c -- make all

Example Visual Studio Code task:

{
    "version": "2.0.0",
    "tasks": [
        {
            "label": "ccdgen",
            "type": "shell",
            "command": "python",
            "osx": {
                "command": "python3"
            },
            "args": [
                "-m", "ccdgen",
                "--extensions", ".c",
                "--", "make", "all"
            ]
        }
    ]
}

Limitations

• The script relies on the Python standard library modules argparse, json, os, subprocess and sys.
• This script relies on make echoing the compiler commands it runs to stdout. If compiler commands are prefixed in the Makefile with @ or make is run in silent mode, the output cannot be captured.
• The build must succeed to generate a full compilation database, though warnings are not a problem.
• Currently only tested with Python 3.10 on macOS Ventura and Windows 10.

Other Tools

• CMake (since version 2.8.5) can be used as is to generate compile_commands.json by adding -DCMAKE_EXPORT_COMPILE_COMMANDS=ON when calling it. This only works for Unix Makefile builds.
• Bear is much more advanced tool for generating compilation databases for clang tooling. macOS, Linux and FreeBSD are currently supported.