Rubber Manual 1.4
Rubber
Rubber is a wrapper for LaTeX and companion programs. Its purpose is,
given a LaTeX source to process, to compile it enough times to resolve
all references, possibly running satellite programs such as BibTeX,
makeindex, Metapost, etc. to produce appropriate data files.
1 Introduction
The purpose of Rubber is to make the building of a document automated, from
the source files to the final document file, replacing the work of a Makefile.
The basis is a routine that compiles a LaTeX source the right number of times
to resolve all references and make all tables of contents, list of figures,
and so on. On top of that, Rubber provides a modular system to handle various
tasks needed apart from compilations. This, for instance, includes processing
bibliographic references or indices, as well as compilation or conversion of
figures. Additionally, modules can perform a post-processing of the document
(for instance to convert a DVI to PostScript or PDF) or even a preprocessing
(useful when the LaTeX source is generated by another program, like cweave).
Dependency analysis is performed by parsing the source files, so that
modifying any source, user package, graphics file or other dependency leads to
appropriate compilations. Modules are triggered either explicitly using
command line options, or implicitly when the sources are parsed. For instance,
BibTeX support is activated whenever the source contains commands that
generate a bibliography, graphics support is activated by
\usepackage{graphics} and similar commands, and so on. The modular
approach allows any additional feature to be supported by simply writing a
module to support it.
Some information cannot be extracted from the LaTeX sources. This is the case,
for instance, with the search paths (which can be specified in environment
variables like TEXINPUTS), or the style to be used with Makeindex. To
address this problem, one can add information for Rubber in the comments of
the LaTeX sources, see Directives.
The package comes with three different command line programs:
- rubber
- Builds the specified documents completely. The source files may be either
LaTeX sources or documents in a format Rubber knows how to translate into
LaTeX.
- rubber-pipe
- Does the same for one document but it reads the LaTeX source from standard
input and dumps the compiled document on standard output.
- rubber-info
- This is a utility for extracting various kinds of information from a LaTeX
document, either from the source or from the compilation log files.
2 Command lines
The command line of each program is read using the GNU Getopt conventions.
rubber and rubber-pipe mostly have the same syntax.
2.1 Syntax for rubber and rubber-pipe
The syntax of the command lines for rubber and rubber-pipe
are:
rubber [options] files
rubber-pipe [options]
The source files may be either LaTeX sources (in which case the suffix
.tex may be omitted) or documents in a format Rubber knows how to
translate into LaTeX. This currently includes CWEB documents (filename
extension .w, via cweave), Literate Haskell (.lhs via
lhs2tex) and Knitr (.Rtex). If any compilation fails, the
whole process stops, including the compilation of the next documents on the
command line, and the program returns a non-zero exit code.
The options are the following:
- -b
- --bzip2
- Compress the final document (in bzip2 format). This option is
equivalent to saying -o bzip2 after all other options. It is
incompatible with the option --gzip.
- --clean
- Remove all files produced by the compilation, instead of building the
document. This option is present in rubber only. It applies to the compilation
as it would be done with the other options of the command line, i.e. saying
rubber --clean foo
will not delete foo.ps, while saying
rubber --ps --clean foo
will.
- -c <command>
- --command <command>
- Execute the specified command (or directive) before parsing the source
files. See Directives.
- -e <command>
- --epilogue <command>
- Execute the specified command (or directive) after parsing the source
fiels. See Directives.
- -f
- --force
- Force at least one compilation of the source. This may be useful, for
instance, if some unusual dependency was modified (e.g. a package in a system
directory). This option is irrelevant in rubber-pipe.
- -z
- --gzip
- Compress the final document (in gzip format). This option is
equivalent to saying -o gz after all other options. It is
incompatible with the option --bzip2.
- -h
- --help
- Display the list of all available options and exit nicely.
- --inplace
- Go to the directory of the source files before compiling, so that compilation
results are in the same place as their sources.
- --into <directory>
- Go to the specified directory before compiling, so that all files are produced
there and not in the current directory.
- --jobname <name>
- Specify a job name different from the base file name.
This changes the name of output files and only applies to the first target.
- -k
- --keep
- This option is for rubber-pipe only. With this option, the temporary
files will not be removed after compiling the document and dumping the results
on standard output. The temporary document is named rubtmpX.tex, where
X is a number such that no file of that name exists initially.
- -l
- --landscape
- Specify that the final document should use landscape orientation. This is
relevant only when using dvips or dvipdfm.
- -n <num>
- --maxerr <num>
- Set the maximum number of displayed errors. By default, up to 10 errors are
reported, saying -n -1 displays all errors.
- -m <module>[:<args>]
- --module <module>[:<args>]
- Use the specified module in addition to the document's packages. Arguments
can be passed to the package by adding them after a colon, they correspond to
the package options in LaTeX. The module is loaded before parsing the
document's sources.
- --only <sources>
- Compile the document partially, including only the specified sources. This
works by inserting a call to \includeonly on the command line. The
argument is a comma-separated list of file names.
- -o <module>[:<args>]
- --post <module>[:<args>]
- Used the specified module as a post-processor. This is similar to the
-m options except that the module is loaded after parsing the
document.
- -d
- --pdf
- Produce PDF output. When this option comes after --ps (for instance
in the form -pd) it is a synonym for -o ps2pdf, otherwise
it acts as -m pdftex, in order to use pdfLaTeX instead of LaTeX.
- -p
- --ps
- Process the DVI produced by the process through dvips to produce a
PostScript document. This option is a synonym for -e module dvips, it
cannot come after --pdf.
- -q
- --quiet
- Suppress all messages during the process.
- -r <file>
- --read <file>
- Read additional directives form the specified file (see also the directive
read).
- -S
- --src-specials
- Enable generation of source \specials if the compiler supports it.
This is equivalent to setting the variable src-specials to
‘yes’.
- -s
- --short
- Display LaTeX's error messages in a compact form (one error per line).
- --synctex
- Enable SyncTeX support in the LaTeX run.
- -I <dir>
- --texpath <dir>
- Add the specified directory to the search path of TeX files.
- --unsafe
- Permit the document to invoke arbitrary external programs. This is potentially
dangerous, only use this option for documents coming from a trusted source.
- -v
- --verbose
- Increase the verbosity level. The default level is 0, levels up to 3 exist.
Beware, saying -vvv makes Rubber speak a lot.
- --version
- Print the version number and exit nicely.
- -W <type>
- --warn <type>
- Report warnings of the given type, if there was no compilation error. The
available types are:
- boxes
- overfull and underfull boxes,
- refs
- undefined or multiply defined references,
- misc
- other warnings,
- all
- all of the above.
2.2 Syntax for rubber-info
The command-line syntax for rubber-info is the following:
rubber-info [options] [action] source
The options are all those accepted by rubber and
rubber-pipe, as described in rubber command line. The
action specified what kind of information has to be extracted. At
most one such argument must be present on the command line, --check
is assumed if none is present. The possible actions are:
- --boxes
- Extracts from the log file the places in the source where bad boxes appeared
(these are the famous overfull and underfull
\hbox and \vbox).
- --check
- Report errors if there are any, otherwise report undefined references if there
are any, otherwise list warnings and bad boxes. This is the default action.
- --deps
- Analyse the source files and produce a space-separated list of all the files
that the document depends on and that Rubber cannot rebuild.
- --errors
- Extract from the log file the list of errors that occured during the last
compilation.
- -h
- --help
- Display the list of all available options and exit nicely.
- --refs
- Report the list of undefined or multiply defined references (i.e. the
\ref's that are not defined by one \label).
- --rules
- Analyse the source files and produce a list of dependency rules. One rule is
produced for each intermediate target that would be made when running
rubber. Rules are formatted in the style of Makefiles.
- --version
- Print the version number and exit nicely.
- --warnings
- Stupidly enumerate all LaTeX warnings, i.e. all the lines in the log file that
contain the string "Warning".
3 Directives
Some information cannot be extracted from the LaTeX sources. To address this
problem, one can add information for Rubber in the comments of the LaTeX
sources, in the form of directives. A directive is a line like
% rubber: cmd args
The line must begin with a ‘%’, then any sequence of ‘%’ signs and
spaces, then the text ‘rubber:’ followed by zero or more spaces and a
directive name, possibly followed by spaces and arguments.
The argument in the directive line are separated by spaces, single and double
quotes allow escaping of spaces (and quotes). The directive can contain
variable references with the syntax ‘$VAR’ or ‘${VAR}’. For
details on the use of variables, see Variables.
If a directive name has the form ‘foo.bar’, it is considered a command
bar for the module foo. If this module is not registered
when the directive is found, then the directive is silently ignored. See the
individual documentation for modules for module-specific directives.
3.1 General directives
- alias <name1> <name2>
- Pretend that the LaTeX macro ‘name1’ is equivalent to ‘name2’. This
can be useful when defining wrappers around supported macros, like:
% rubber: alias ig includegraphics
\newcommand\ig[1]{\includegraphics[scale=.5]{#1}}
- clean <file>
- Indicates that the specified file should be removed when cleaning using
--clean.
- depend <file>
- Consider the specified file as a dependency, so that its modification time
will be checked.
- make <file> [<options>]
- Declare that the specified file has to be generated. Options can specify the
way it should be produced, the available options are from <file> to
specify the source and with <rule> to specify the conversion rule.
For instance, saying
% rubber: make foo.pdf from foo.eps
indicates that foo.pdf should be produced from foo.eps, with any
conversion rule that can do it.
- module <module> [<options>]
- Loads the specified module, possibly with options. This is equivalent to
the command-line option --module.
- onchange <file> <command>
- Execute the specified shell command after compiling if the contents of the
specified file have changed. In case the file or command contains
spaces, they must be enclosed within double or single quotes.
- paper <options>
- Specify options related to paper size. Currently they are used to give
-t options to dvips and -p options to
dvipdfm.
- path <directory>
- Adds the specified directory to the search path for TeX (and Rubber). The
name of the directory is everything that follows the spaces after
‘path’.
- produce <file>
- Declares that the LaTeX run will create or update the specified file(s).
This implies that Rubber will check if the file contents changed and re-make
other files derived from it; it also implies that rubber –clean will
remove the indicated file. produce may be combined with watch.
For example, Rubber's built-in behavior of recompiling the main LaTeX source
until the auxiliary file's contents no longer changes may be achieved using
produce document.aux
watch document.aux
- read <file>
- Read the specified file of directives. The file must contain one directive per
line. Empty lines and lines that begin with ‘%’ are ignored.
- rules <file>
- Read extra conversion rules from the specified file. The format of this file
is the same as that of rules.ini, see rules.ini.
- set <name> <value>
- Set the value of a variable as a string. For details on the existing variables
and their meaning, see Variables.
- setlist <name> <values>
- Set the value of a variable as a list of strings. The list is space-separated,
possibly empty. For details on the existing variables and their meaning, see
Variables.
- shell_escape
- Mark the document as requiring external programs (shell-escape or write18).
Rubber does not actually enable this unless called with the option
--unsafe.
- synctex
- Enable SyncTeX support in the LaTeX run.
- watch <file>
- Watch the specified file for changes. If the contents of this file has
changed after a compilation, then another compilation is triggered. This is
useful in the case of tables of contents, for instance.
3.2 Variables
The following variables are defined by Rubber (or its modules) and used by
various modules to influence compilation. All variables are strings that
should be defined by the set directive, unless explicitly specified.
- arguments (list)
- Extra command-line arguments that are passed to the compiler. Note that this
is potentially dangerous and has no reason to be portable across different
compilers. This variable contains a list of strings, it should be set using
the
setlist directive.
- base
- The base name of the main source file, including its path but without the
extension.
- engine
- The name of the TeX engine used. By default this is ‘TeX’, this can be
changed to ‘VTeX’, ‘pdfTeX’, ‘Omega’ or others by the modules
that change the compiler, see Compiler choice.
- ext
- The extension of the main source file.
- file
- The name of the current file (this is set during parsing).
- job
- The job name of the document, with no path indication.
Note that changing the value of this variable does not affect compilation; in
order to actually change the job name, use the command line option
--jobname.
- latex
- Specify which program should be used for compiling. By default this is
latex, various modules can change it in order to use a different
compiler instead, see Compiler choice.
- logfile_limit
- Specify how much of the LaTeX logfile Rubber reads.
The default is 1 MB, which should be ample for any real document.
- line
- The current line number in the current file (this is set during parsing).
- paper
- The paper size to use when compiling. This is used by post-processors like
dvips or dvipdfm.
- path
- The path name of the main output file.
- src-specials
- The kind of source \specials that should be generated. When empty
(which is the case by default), no \specials are generated. When set
to ‘yes’, the default set is generated, otherwise the variable is passed
as the argument of the -src-specials switch of the compiler.
4 Modules
4.1 Supported Packages
For every package that a document uses, Rubber looks for a module of
the same name to perform the tasks that this package my require apart
from the compilation by LaTeX. Modules can be added to the ones provided by
default to include new features (this is the point of the module system). The
standard modules are the following:
- asymptote
- Process the
.asy files generated by the LaTeX package, then
triggers a recompilation.
- beamer
- This module handles Beamer's extra files the same way as other tables
of contents.
- biblatex
- Takes care of processing the document's bibliographies with Biber or BibTeX
when needed. For details, see BibLaTeX.
- bibtex
- bibtopic
- multibib
- Takes care of processing the document's bibliographies with BibTeX when
needed. The bibtex module is automatically loaded if the document
contains the macro
\bibliography. For details, see BibTeX.
- combine
- The combine package is used to gather several LaTeX documents into a single
one, and this module handles the dependencies in this case.
- epsfig
- This modules handles graphics inclusion for the documents that use the old
style
\psfig macro. It is actually an interface for the graphics
system, for details see Graphics.
- glossaries
- Run
makeglossaries and recompiles when the .glo file changes.
- graphics
- graphicx
- These modules identify the graphics included in the document and consider them
as dependencies for compilation. They also use standard rules to build these
files with external programs. For more details, see Graphics.
- hyperref
- Handle the extra files that this package produces in some cases.
- index
- makeidx
- nomencl
- Process the document's indexes with makeindex when needed. For
details, see Indexing.
- minitoc
- minitoc-hyper
- On cleaning, remove additional files that produced to make partial tables of
contents.
- moreverb
- verbatim
- Adds the files included with
\verbatiminput and similar macros to the
list of dependencies.
- ltxtable
- Add dependencies for files inserted via the
ltxtable LaTeX package.
- xr
- Add additional .aux files used for external references to the list of
dependencies, so recompiling is automatic when refer- enced document are
changed.
4.1.1 BibLaTeX support
If the document loads the package biblatex, Rubber enables
BibLaTeX support. Rubber will extract the appropriate external bibliography
tool such as biber or bibtex from the backend
option to the biblatex package and invoke it as needed.
- biblatex.path <directory>
- Add the specified directory to the seach path for BibTeX database files
(.bib files). The directory will be passed down to the bibliography
tool in the environment variable BIBINPUTS.
4.1.2 BibTeX support
If the document contains a call to \bibliography or
\bibliographystyle, then the BibTeX module is used. This triggers the
execution of BibTeX between compilations when new references are made,
bibliographies are changed, and in other appropriate cases. The following
directives may be used to control BibTeX's behaviour:
- bibtex.crossrefs <number>
- Set the minimum number of crossref required for automatic inclusion
of the referenced entry in the citation list. This sets the option
-min-crossrefs when calling bibtex.
- bibtex.path <directory>
- Add the specified directory to the seach path for BibTeX database files
(.bib files). The directory will be passed down to the bibliography
tool in the environment variable BIBINPUTS.
- bibtex.stylepath <directory>
- Add the specified directory to the search path for BibTeX style files
(.bst files).
- bibtex.tool <command>
- Call the specified command instead of bibtex to process the .aux file,
for example bibtex8.
Multiple bibliographies can be handled by the multibib package. The
directives provided by the multibib module are the same as those of
the bibtex module, and they may be used with an optional first
arument of the form ‘(foo,bar,quux)’ in order to specify that the
directive only applies to the bibliographies named ‘foo’, ‘bar’ and
‘quux’. By default, directives are applied to all bibliographies.
4.1.3 Index generation
The use of the packages index, makeidx and
nomencl triggers the
generation of an index (or several of them). Currently Rubber can use either
the standard Makeindex or the more sophisticated Xindy. The following
directives may be used to control how indices are generated:
- index.tool <name>
- Specifies which tool is to be used to process the index. The currently
supported tools are makeindex (the default choice) and
xindy.
- index.language <language>
- Selects the language used for sorting the index. This only applies when
using xindy as the indexing tool.
- index.modules <module>...
- Specify which modules to use when processing an index with xindy.
- index.order <options>
- Modifies the sorting options for the index. The argument must be a
space-separated list of words among ‘standard’, ‘german’ and
‘letter’. his only applies when using makeindex.
- index.path <directory>
- Adds the specified directory to the search path for index style files
(.ist files).
- index.style <style>
- Specifies the index style to be used.
Each of these directives may be used with an optional first arument of the
form ‘(foo,bar,quux)’ in order to specify that the directive only applies
to the indexes named ‘foo’, ‘bar’ and ‘quux’. By default,
directives are applied to all indices.
When using the package makeidx instead of index, the
directives must of course be prefixed by ‘makeidx.’ instead of
‘index.’, and the optional first argument is not accepted.
4.2 Post-processors
The following modules are provided to support different kinds of
post-processings. Note that the order matters when using these modules: if you
want to use a processing chain like
foo.tex -> foo.dvi -> foo.ps -> foo.pdf -> foo.pdf.gz
you have to load the modules dvips, ps2pdf and
gz in that order, for instance using the command line
rubber -p -o ps2pdf -z foo.tex
- bzip2
- Produce a version of the final document compressed with bzip2.
- dvipdfm
- Runs dvipdfm at the end of compilation to produce a PDF document.
- dvips
- Runs dvips at the end of compilation to produce a PostScript
document. This module is also loaded by the command line option --ps.
- expand
- Produce an expanded LaTeX source by replacing
\input macros by included
files, bibliography macros by the bibliography produced by bibtex,
and local classes and packages by their source. For details, see Expand.
- gz
- Produce a version of the final document compressed with gzip.
- ps2pdf
- Assuming that the compilation produces a PostScript document (for instance
using module dvips), convert this document to PDF using
ps2pdf.
4.2.1 Dvips and Dvipdfm
The dvips and dvipdfm modules can be used to call the
associated DVI drivers to produce PostScript or PDF documents from the DVI
output of LaTeX. The following directives may be used to change their
behaviour:
- paper <options>
- Specify options related to paper size. Currently they are used to give
-t options to dvips and -p options to
dvipdfm. The command-line option --landscape is equivalent
to the directive ‘paper landscape’.
- dvipdfm.options <options>
- dvips.options <options>
- Pass the specified options to the driver. The argument is a space-separated
list of options that are passed before the DVI file's name.
4.2.2 Source file expansion
The module expand produces a LaTeX source from the original one by
expanding included files and packages. If the main file is foo.tex
then then expanded file will be named foo-final.tex. This file will be
self-contained, in particular it will not need BibTeXing nor user-defined
packages, as may be required when preparing the final version of a document
for publication.
As additional effect, this module removes all comments from the source file
(including those that may contain Rubber directives). It also removes any text
that may be present after \end{document}.
Please note that this module is rather experimental.
The following options control how the expansion is done:
- class
- If the document class is user-defined (i.e. if it is in a local directory
instead of a system directory), the
\documentclass call will be
replaced by the code of the .cls file. Note that this is dangerous in
general.
- nobib
- Do not expand the bibliography. When this option is not present, any
call to \bibiography is discarded and the call to
\bibliographystyle is replaced by the document's .bbl file.
- nopkg
- Do not expand user-defined packages. When this option is not present,
local packages (i.e. those that are in the current directory) are replaced by
their contents.
4.3 Changing compilers
The following modules are used to change the LaTeX compiler:
- aleph
- Use the Aleph compiler instead of TeX, i.e. compile with lamed
instead of latex.
- omega
- Use the Omega compiler instead of TeX, i.e. compiles the document using
lambda instead of latex. If the module dvips is
used too, it will use odvips to translate the DVI file. Note that
this module is triggered automatically when the document uses the package
omega.
- pdftex
- Instructs Rubber to use pdflatex instead of latex to
compile the document. By default, this produces a PDF file instead of a DVI,
but when loading the module with the option dvi (for instance by
saying -m pdftex:dvi) the document is compiled into DVI using
pdflatex. This module is also loaded by the command line option
--pdf.
- vtex
- Instructs Rubber to use the VTeX compiler. By default this uses
vlatex as the compiler to produce PDF output. With the option
ps (e.g. when saying rubber -m vtex:ps foo.tex) the
compiler used is vlatexp and the result is a PostScript file.
5 Graphics conversion
Rubber includes a system for automatic conversion of graphics (and other
files) between various file formats. This is used when graphics are included
using commands from the packages graphicx, graphics or
epsfig.
When a graphics inclusion macro like \includegraphics (even with the
parameters allowed by the graphicx package) or \epsfig is
found in a LaTeX source, Rubber looks for the corresponding file or a way to
generate it. If the call to the macro does not specify a file extension, then
the list of possible suffixes is tried (according to the current compiler and
the options passed to the graphics package). For each possible file name,
Rubber tries to find a good way to convert this file from a source, and looks
for the file itself. The precise method is described in
Conversion algorithm.
5.1 Conversion algorithm
Files are converted using conversion rules, as described in
Standard rules, and each rule can take a number of formats as input and
produce a number of formats as output.
Assume you are using pdflatex to compile a document that contains a
macro call \includegraphics{foo}. Since pdftex only
accepts figures in png, pdf and jpg format, one
of foo.png, foo.pdf and foo.jpg must be available. If the
only available file around happens to be foo.gif, it has to be
translated into one of these formats. There are tools to convert gif
files into just about any other format, so we have to choose the proper
conversion to perform.
Hence all rules have a cost, an integer that represents how unlikely a
given conversion is. For instance the rule form .fig to
.eps files (for XFig support) has cost zero because it is almost
certain that this is the expected rule when the .fig file exists. On
the other hand, the rule from .eps to .jpeg has cost 11
because this conversion is possible though usually not wanted.
Now assume that a directory contains a LaTeX source that contains
\includegraphics{foo} and that both foo.eps and
foo.pdf are present, because we want to compile the document both to
PostScript and to PDF format. How can Rubber decide which figure is the source
file and which is converted from the other? By default, in this situation, no
conversion will ever be performed, since there is no way to decide. Generally,
a file will never be overwritten if the source could have been produced by
some conversion rule. This behaviour can be overridden using the
make directive, see General directives.
To sum up, for each requested file, the detection algorithm works as follows.
If relevant, take all possible suffixes (i.e. all accepted file formats, if no
format is specified in the source), and take all possible directories where
the file will be searched for by LaTeX. In each case, you get a file name
foo. If there is an applicable rule with cost at most 0 to produce
foo, use that rule. Otherwise, if the file foo exists, use it
without conversion. Otherwise use the applicable rule with the least cost. If
all fails, proceed to the next file name.
The list of standard rules is defined in the file rules.ini in the
data directory. The syntax of this file is described in rules.ini, the
standard rules are described in Standard rules. Additional rules can be
defined in a file with the same format and declared using the directive
rules.
The path searched for graphics files is the same as that for LaTeX inputs by
default. If the macro \graphicspath is used, the specified paths are
also searched, the same way as LaTeX does. Limited support is also provided
for the \DeclareGraphicsExtensions and
\DeclareGraphicsRule macros.
5.2 Standard conversion rules
The following built-in rules are available:
- eps_gz
- This rule is used to extract a bounding box from a gzipped EPS file, in order
to be able to compile a document while keeping large figure files compressed.
- fig2dev
- This is the exporting program that goes with XFig. It is used to convert files
in .fig format into EPS, PDF or PNG. Rubber also supports the use of
combined EPS/LaTeX of PDF/LaTeX, it is detected when an \input macro
refers to a filename that ends in .eps_t or .pstex_t. When the
suffix is .eps_t or .pdf_t, the same document will compile both
in PostScript and PDF.
- mpost
- MetaPost has extra support in Rubber. If a graphics is included with a
filename that ends with a dot and a decimal number like foo.42, then
it is considered to be generated from foo.mp if it exists. Dependency
analysis is performed between MetaPost sources, so that recompilation always
occurs when needed. If the compilation of a MetaPost source fails, the errors
are reported as it would be done for LaTeX errors.
- shell
- Other programs can be used using the shell rule. This rule takes an
extra parameter
command, specified in the rule file, that defines a
shell command-line. This is used for simple conversion rules using
command-line tools like convert (from ImageMagick),
epstopdf.
5.3 Syntax of rules.ini
The rules file has a format in the style of Wind*ws INI files. The lines that
start with a semicolon ; are comments, empty lines are ignored. The
file is decomposed in sections, each introduced by a line of the form
[rule-name]
where rule-name is a unique identifier for the rule. Following this
header are lines of the form
key = value
where key is an attribute name and value is its value, without
any quotes. The spaces around the value are stripped.
The following attributes are used:
target- A regular expression that matches the target file name.
source- A template that describes the source file name, with references to groups
marked in the target expression as
\1, \2 etc. This template may
also contain choices of the form {foo,bar,quux} to denote several
possibilities for the source name.
rule- The name of the conversion rule. This name currently refers to internal
modules of Rubber, as described in Standard rules.
cost- The cost of the rule, as an integer. In the default file, this ranges between
0 and 12.
6 Index