[llvm-dev] [FYI] CMake's Ninja generator is non-deterministic

[Chris Bieneman via llvm-dev]

Brad King has already replied with a patch that removes many of the differences (but not all). It was iterating over a std::map keyed on pointers.

-Chris

> On Feb 10, 2016, at 2:12 PM, Mehdi Amini <mehdi.amini at apple.com> wrote:
> 
> From what I see reproducing offline, it is the order of dependencies that is changing (I bet they iterate over an unordered container):
> 
> Example:
> 
> < build cmake_order_depends_target_llvm-profdata: phony || lib/libLLVMSupport.a lib/libLLVMCore.a lib/libLLVMBitReader.a lib/libLLVMMC.a lib/libLLVMMCParser.a lib/libLLVMObject.a lib/libLLVMProfileData.a
> ---
> > build cmake_order_depends_target_llvm-profdata: phony || lib/libLLVMProfileData.a lib/libLLVMSupport.a lib/libLLVMCore.a lib/libLLVMBitReader.a lib/libLLVMMC.a lib/libLLVMMCParser.a lib/libLLVMObject.a
> 
> 
> The consequence is the order of the libraries is not the same on the command line.
> Have you seen other differences?
> 
> You may want to update the bug report with these information if you think it could be useful.
> 
> 
> -- 
> Mehdi
> 
> 
> 
>> On Feb 10, 2016, at 10:01 AM, Chris Bieneman via llvm-dev <llvm-dev at lists.llvm.org <mailto:llvm-dev at lists.llvm.org>> wrote:
>> 
>> It is with great sadness that I must tell everyone CMake’s Ninja generator is non-deterministic (https://public.kitware.com/Bug/view.php?id=15968 <https://public.kitware.com/Bug/view.php?id=15968>).
>> 
>> I’m not sure if this impacts all versions of CMake, but it certainly impacts all the recent releases. You might ask why this matters? Sadly the non-determinism *does* impact determinism in the final builds. I haven’t fully dug into the extent of the differences, but I was seeing non-reproducibility in LTO builds. Whatever Ninja is doing differently causes LTO to make different optimization decisions. I have verified that this does not impact CMake’s makefile generator.
>> 
>> The important takeaway from this is that if you are building for a purpose where non-determinism can impact your results, don’t use Ninja. For most engineering tasks building and testing locally Ninja, as always, works great. For incremental bots testing correctness, no problem.
>> 
>> Any bots testing performance need to move to a deterministic generator (i.e. Unix Makefiles). Anyone building or testing a release of LLVM or clang for packaging purposes should also use a deterministic generator.
>> 
>> Sorry to be the bearer of bad news…
>> 
>> -Chris
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