# Copyright (c) 2001, 2002 Steven Knight SCons - a software construction tool Welcome to the SCons development tree. The real purpose of this tree is to package SCons for production distribution in a variety of formats, not just to hack SCons code. To that extent, the normal development cycle (enforced by Aegis) is not to test the code directly, but to package SCons, unpack the package, "install" SCons in a test subdirectory, and then to run the tests against the unpacked and installed software. This helps eliminate problems caused by, for example, failure to update the list of files to be packaged. Note that if all you want to do is install and run SCons, it will probably be easier for you to download and install the scons-{version}.tar.gz or scons-{version}.zip package rather than to work with the packaging logic in this tree. LATEST VERSION ============== Before going further, you can check that this package you have is the latest version at the SCons download page: http://www.scons.org/download.html EXECUTION REQUIREMENTS ====================== Running SCons requires Python version 1.5.2 or later. There should be no other dependencies or requirements to run SCons. The default SCons configuration assumes use of the Microsoft Visual C++ compiler suite on WIN32 systems, and assumes a C compiler named 'cc', a C++ compiler named 'c++', and a Fortran compiler named 'g77' (such as found in the GNU C compiler suite) on any other type of system. You may, of course, override these default values by appropriate configuration of Environment construction variables. INSTALLATION REQUIREMENTS ========================= Building and installing SCons from this package requires the Python distutils package. The distutils package was not shipped as a standard part of Python until Python version 1.6, so if your system is running Python 1.5.2, you may not have distutils installed. If you are running Python version 1.6 or later, you should be fine. NOTE TO RED HAT USERS: All Red Hat Linux versions as late as 7.3 (at least) still ship Python 1.5.2 as the default, so you probably do *not* have distutils installed, unless you have already done so manually. In this case, your options are: -- (Optional.) Install from a pre-packaged SCons package that does not require distutils: Red Hat Linux scons-0.08-1.noarch.rpm Debian GNU/Linux scons_0.08-1_all.deb (or use apt-get) Windows scons-0.08.win32.exe -- (Recommended.) Download the latest distutils package from the following URL: http://www.python.org/sigs/distutils-sig/download.html Install the distutils according to the instructions on the page. You can then proceed to the next section to install SCons from this package. INSTALLATION ============ Assuming your system satisfies the installation requirements in the previous section, install SCons from this package by first populating the build/scons/ directory. (For an easier way to install SCons, without having to populate this directory, use the scons-{version}.tar.gz or scons-{version}.zip package.) If you already have an appropriate version of SCons installed on your system, populate the build/scons/ directory by running: $ scons build/scons If you don't have SCons version 0.08 or later already installed on your system, you can use SCons itself to populate the build/scons/ directory with a little more typing: $ SCONS_LIB_DIR=`pwd`/src/engine python src/script/scons.py build/scons Either command will populate the build/scons/ directory with the necessary files and directory structure to use the Python-standard setup script as follows: # cd build/scons # python setup.py install This will install the scons script in the default system script directory (/usr/bin or C:\Python*\Scripts, for example) and the build engine in an appropriate SCons library directory (/usr/lib/scons or C:\Python*\SCons, for example). You should have system installation privileges (that is, "root" on POSIX or "Administrator" on Windows) when running the setup.py script to install SCons in the default system directories. If you don't have system installation privileges, you can use the --prefix option to specify an alternate installation location, such as your home directory: $ cd build/scons $ python setup.py install --prefix=$HOME This will install the scons script itself in $HOME/bin and the associated library in $HOME/lib/scons TESTING ======= Tests are run by the runtest.py script in this directory. There are two types of tests in this package: Unit tests for individual SCons modules live underneath the src/engine/ subdirectory and are the same base name as the module with "Tests.py" appended--for example, the unit test for the Builder.py module is the BuilderTests.py script. End-to-end tests of SCons live in the test/ subdirectory. You may specifically list one or more tests to be run: $ python runtest.py src/engine/SCons/BuilderTests.py $ python runtest.py test/option-j.py test/Program.py Alternatively, the runtest.py script takes a -a option that searches the tree for all of the tests and runs them: $ python runtest.py -a If more than one test is run, the runtest.py script prints a summary of how many tests passed, failed, or yielded no result, and lists any unsuccessful tests. The above invocations all test directly the files underneath the src/ subdirectory, and do not require that a build be performed first. The runtest.py script supports additional options to run tests against unpacked packages in the build/test-*/ subdirectories. See the "TESTING PACKAGES" section below. BUILDING PACKAGES ================= We now use SCons (version 0.08 or later) to build its own packages. If you already have an appropriate version of SCons installed on your system, you can build everything by simply running it: $ scons If you don't have SCons version 0.08 or later already installed on your system, you can build this version of SCons with itself with a little more typing: $ SCONS_LIB_DIR=`pwd`/src/engine python src/script/scons.py Depending on the utilities installed on your system, any or all of the following packages will be built: build/dist/scons-0.08-1.noarch.rpm build/dist/scons-0.08-1.src.rpm build/dist/scons-0.08.linux-i686.tar.gz build/dist/scons-0.08.tar.gz build/dist/scons-0.08.win32.exe build/dist/scons-0.08.zip build/dist/scons-doc-0.08.tar.gz build/dist/scons-src-0.08.tar.gz build/dist/scons-src-0.08.zip build/dist/scons_0.08-1_all.deb The SConstruct file is supposed to be smart enough to avoid trying to build packages for which you don't have the proper utilities installed. For example, if you don't have Debian packaging tools installed, it should just not build the .deb package, not fail the build. If you receive a build error, please report it to the scons-devel mailing list and open a bug report on the SCons bug tracker. Note that in addition to creating the above packages, the default build will also unpack one or more of the packages for testing. TESTING PACKAGES ================ A full build will unpack and/or install any .deb, .rpm., .src.tar.gz, .src.zip, .tar.gz, and .zip packages into separate build/test-*/ subdirectories. (Of course, if a package was not built on your system, it should not try to install it.) The runtest.py script supports a -p option that will run the specified tests (individually or collectively via the -a option) against the unpacked build/test-/* subdirectory: $ python runtest.py -p deb $ python runtest.py -p rpm $ python runtest.py -p src-tar-gz $ python runtest.py -p src-zip $ python runtest.py -p tar-gz $ python runtest.py -p zip (The canonical invocation is to also use the runtest.py -a option so that all tests are run against the specified package.) CONTENTS OF THIS PACKAGE ======================== Not guaranteed to be up-to-date (but better than nothing): bin/ Miscellaneous utilities used in SCons development. Right now, there's a copy of the script we use to translate an Aegis change into a CVS checkin. build/ This doesn't exist yet if you're looking at a vanilla source tree. This is generated as part of our build process, and it's where, believe it or not, we *build* everything. config The Aegis configuration, governing much of how we use Aegis to build, test, control source, etc. debian/ Files needed to construct a Debian package. The contents of this directory are dictated by the Debian Policy Manual (http://www.debian.org/doc/debian-policy). The package will not be accepted into the Debian distribution unless the contents of this directory satisfy the relevant Debian policies. doc/ SCons documentation. A variety of things here, in various stages of (in)completeness. etc/ A subdirectory for miscellaneous things that we need. Right now, it has copies of Python modules that we use for testing, and which we don't want to force people to have to install on their own just to help out with SCons development. HOWTO/ Documentation of SCons administrative procedures (making a change, releasing a new version). Maybe other administrative stuff in the future. LICENSE A copy of the copyright and terms under which SCons is distributed (the Open Source Initiative-approved MIT license). README What you're looking at right now. rpm/ The .spec file for building our RPM packages. runtest.py Script for running SCons tests. By default, this will run a test against the code in the local src/ tree, so you don't have to do a build before testing your changes. Aegis uses it with an option that requires that you've done a build (aeb) before running tests. SConstruct The "Makefile" for the SCons distribution. (It has been pointed out that it's hard to find the SCons API in this SConstruct file, and that it looks a lot more like a pure Python script than a build configuration file. That's mainly because all of the magick we have to perform to deal with all of the different packaging formats requires a lot of pure Python manipulation.) src/ Where the actual source code is kept, of course. template/ Template files, used by Aegis to give you a head start when you aenf or aent a new file. test/ End-to-end tests of the SCons utility itself. These are separate from the individual module unit tests, which live side-by-side with the modules under src/. DOCUMENTATION ============= See the src/RELEASE.txt file for notes about this specific release, including known problems. See the src/CHANGES.txt file for a list of changes since the previous release. The doc/man/scons.1 man page is included in this package, and contains a section of small examples for getting started using SCons. Additional documentation for SCons is available at: http://www.scons.org/doc.html LICENSING ========= SCons is distributed under the MIT license, a full copy of which is available in the LICENSE file. The MIT license is an approved Open Source license, which means: This software is OSI Certified Open Source Software. OSI Certified is a certification mark of the Open Source Initiative. More information about OSI certifications and Open Source software is available at: http://www.opensource.org/ REPORTING BUGS ============== You can report bugs either by following the "Tracker - Bugs" link on the SCons project page: http://sourceforge.net/projects/scons/ or by sending mail to the SCons developers mailing list: scons-devel@lists.sourceforge.net MAILING LISTS ============= A mailing list for developers of SCons is available. You may send questions or comments to the list at: scons-devel@lists.sourceforge.net You may request a subscription to the scons-devel mailing list at: http://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/scons-devel Subscription to the list is by approval. In practice, no one is being refused list membership right now, but we reserve the right to limit membership in the future and/or weed out lurkers. FOR MORE INFORMATION ==================== Check the SCons web site at: http://www.scons.org/ AUTHOR INFO =========== Steven Knight knight at baldmt dot com http://www.baldmt.com/~knight/ With plenty of help from the SCons Development team: Chad Austin Charles Crain Steve Leblanc Anthony Roach Terrel Shumway