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+<!--
+
+ __COPYRIGHT__
+
+ Permission is hereby granted, free of charge, to any person obtaining
+ a copy of this software and associated documentation files (the
+ "Software"), to deal in the Software without restriction, including
+ without limitation the rights to use, copy, modify, merge, publish,
+ distribute, sublicense, and/or sell copies of the Software, and to
+ permit persons to whom the Software is furnished to do so, subject to
+ the following conditions:
+
+ The above copyright notice and this permission notice shall be included
+ in all copies or substantial portions of the Software.
+
+ THE SOFTWARE IS PROVIDED "AS IS", WITHOUT WARRANTY OF ANY
+ KIND, EXPRESS OR IMPLIED, INCLUDING BUT NOT LIMITED TO THE
+ WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY, FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE AND
+ NONINFRINGEMENT. IN NO EVENT SHALL THE AUTHORS OR COPYRIGHT HOLDERS BE
+ LIABLE FOR ANY CLAIM, DAMAGES OR OTHER LIABILITY, WHETHER IN AN ACTION
+ OF CONTRACT, TORT OR OTHERWISE, ARISING FROM, OUT OF OR IN CONNECTION
+ WITH THE SOFTWARE OR THE USE OR OTHER DEALINGS IN THE SOFTWARE.
+
+-->
+
+ <para>
+
+ There are two occasions when &SCons; will,
+ by default, remove target files.
+ The first is when &SCons; determines that
+ an target file needs to be rebuilt
+ and removes the existing version of the target
+ before executing
+ The second is when &SCons; is invoked with the
+ <literal>-c</literal> option to "clean"
+ a tree of its built targets.
+
+ These behaviours can be suppressed with the
+ &Precious; and &NoClean; functions, respectively.
+
+ </para>
+
+ <section>
+ <title>Preventing target removal during build: the &Precious; Function</title>
+
+ <para>
+
+ By default, &SCons; removes targets before building them.
+ Sometimes, however, this is not what you want.
+ For example, you may want to update a library incrementally,
+ not by having it deleted and then rebuilt from all
+ of the constituent object files.
+ In such cases, you can use the
+ &Precious; method to prevent
+ &SCons; from removing the target before it is built:
+
+ </para>
+
+ <programlisting>
+ env = Environment(RANLIBCOM='')
+ lib = env.Library('foo', ['f1.c', 'f2.c', 'f3.c'])
+ env.Precious(lib)
+ </programlisting>
+
+ <para>
+
+ Although the output doesn't look any different,
+ &SCons; does not, in fact,
+ delete the target library before rebuilding it:
+
+ </para>
+
+ <screen>
+ % <userinput>scons -Q</userinput>
+ cc -o f1.o -c f1.c
+ cc -o f2.o -c f2.c
+ cc -o f3.o -c f3.c
+ ar rc libfoo.a f1.o f2.o f3.o
+ </screen>
+
+ <para>
+
+ &SCons; will, however, still delete files marked as &Precious;
+ when the <literal>-c</literal> option is used.
+
+ </para>
+
+ </section>
+
+
+ <section>
+ <title>Preventing target removal during clean: the &NoClean; Function</title>
+
+ <para>
+
+ By default, &SCons; removes all built targets when invoked
+ with the <literal>-c</literal> option to clean a source tree
+ of built tragets.
+ Sometimes, however, this is not what you want.
+ For example, you may want to remove only intermediate generated files
+ (such as object files),
+ but leave the final targets
+ (the libraries)
+ untouched.
+
+ In such cases, you can use the &NoClean; method to prevent &SCons;
+ from removing a target during a clean:
+
+ </para>
+
+ <programlisting>
+ env = Environment(RANLIBCOM='')
+ lib = env.Library('foo', ['f1.c', 'f2.c', 'f3.c'])
+ env.NoClean(lib)
+ </programlisting>
+
+ <para>
+
+ Notice that the <filename>libfoo.a</filename>
+ is not listed as a removed file:
+
+ </para>
+
+ <screen>
+ % <userinput>scons -Q</userinput>
+ cc -o f1.o -c f1.c
+ cc -o f2.o -c f2.c
+ cc -o f3.o -c f3.c
+ ar rc libfoo.a f1.o f2.o f3.o
+ % <userinput>scons -c</userinput>
+ scons: Reading SConscript files ...
+ scons: done reading SConscript files.
+ scons: Cleaning targets ...
+ Removed f1.o
+ Removed f2.o
+ Removed f3.o
+ scons: done cleaning targets.
+ </screen>
+
+ </section>
+