--clean-all failing due to argument list too long

[mapiri]

Hi,
we have a large software project and calling b2 --clean-all leads to a command line length of around 200 000 bytes, which produces the following error:
[errno 7] execvp (Argument list too long)
Looking at the documentation and common.jam, the clean action has the piecemeal attribute, which to my understanding, should split up the list of files to be removed in chunks that are smaller than the command line length limit.
Shouldn't that work or am I misunderstanding the concept? Any other workaround that you can suggest?
This is for toolset gcc on linux. Response files don't seem to be supported for gcc on linux, right?

Thanks,
LS

[grafikrobot]

Some of the actions in the gcc toolset do support response files. Although note that they are dynamic. And only kick in when the command length is above a threshold. But currently it's only the link and archive actions. But that is tangential to the RmTemps action for removing files on the clean.

For clean, yes, the RmTemps should be doing things piecemeal. So this seems like a bug to me. Perhaps it's behaving badly between the piecemeal and the together.

The only immediate workaround I can think of you can try is to remove the together modifier from the RmTemps action. Not the best solution since it will them execute many, many, individual rm commands. But should avoid the error.

The next best solution is for me to fix the problem. And the ultimate solution, is for me to implement a native RmTemps that does the deletes directly and in parallel.

[mapiri]

Thanks for the quick response and advice!
Removing attribute 'together' from 'Clean' action works, i.e. avoids the command line length limit as it results in removing each file one by one. It prints out ''common.Clean clean-all' for each target without mentioning the target that is cleaned, which is not very meaningful and could probably be suppressed altogether by adding attribute 'quietly'. Anyway, that's just cosmetics.

We also run in an issue where a target turns out to be a directory (some Python package that gets created as part of an action as far as I understand, i.e. all the files within this directory are probably not visible to b2) and so the default RM, which is rm -f, doesn't work. Of course, I can add option -r in the Clean action, but this could have unwanted side effects. Probably targets should always be associated with files? Is this always possible/practical?

Any advice on how to best deal with this issue.

Thanks,
LS