NAME

buildit —

time a command, log its output and mail notification when finished

SYNOPSIS

buildit [-m] -l logfile command ...

DESCRIPTION

The buildit command is a trivial wrapper script for running commands unattended. buildit will start the given command using time(1); log the stdout and stderr of the command in the given logfile; wait for termination of the command while printing its output on the terminal; and then optionally mail the head and tail of the logfile to the calling user.

The date(1) command is called before and after the command so that there is a start and end date of the process in the logfile.

OPTIONS

The options are as follows:

-m: do not send mail when finished.
-l logfile: log stdin and stderr to this logfile. If the logfile already exists, it is moved to logfile.old.

EXAMPLES

Here are typical usages of the buildit command:

buildit -l /var/src/install.out make
  installworld | whereintheworld

buildit -l trace.log povray +iscene
  +oscene.out

DIAGNOSTICS

Exit status is 0 on success, and 1 if the command fails for one of the following reasons:

-l parameter mandatory: No logfile has been chosen.

COMPATIBILITY

The mail(1) command is called to send email, with the -s flag to set the subject. This might not work equally on all systems.

HISTORY

The buildit manual page was first written for worldtools 1.2

AUTHORS

The buildit command and this manual page were written by The Anarcat ⟨anarcat@anarcat.ath.cx⟩.

BUGS

buildit might leave stray processes running, even after being interrupted. This is due to a bug in sh since calling trap from a subshell has no effect. See the file test_trap.sh in the source distribution for an example.