BUILDIT(8) BSD System Manager's Manual BUILDIT(8)NAMEbuildit — time a command, log its output and mail notification when fin‐
ished
SYNOPSISbuildit [-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 termina‐
tion 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.
SEE ALSOtime(1), wait(1), head(1), tail(1), mail(1), date(1), kill(1),
whereintheworld(8).
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⟩.
BUGSbuildit might leave stray processes running, even after being inter‐
rupted. 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.
BSD December 9, 2003 BSD
