<!-- __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. --> <!-- =head2 The C<Salt> method The C<Salt> method adds a constant value to the signature calculation for every derived file. It is invoked as follows: Salt $string; Changing the Salt value will force a complete rebuild of every derived file. This can be used to force rebuilds in certain desired circumstances. For example, Salt `uname -s`; Would force a complete rebuild of every derived file whenever the operating system on which the build is performed (as reported by C<uname -s>) changes. --> <para> So far we've seen how &SCons; handles one-time builds. But the real point of a build tool like &SCons; is to rebuild only the necessary things when source files change--or, put another way, &SCons; should <emphasis>not</emphasis> waste time rebuilding things that have already been built. You can see this at work simply be re-invoking &SCons; after building our simple &hello; example: </para> <scons_example name="ex1"> <file name="SConstruct"> Program('hello.c') </file> <file name="hello.c"> int main() { printf("Hello, world!\n"); } </file> </scons_example> <scons_output example="ex1" os="posix"> <command>scons -Q</command> <command>scons -Q</command> </scons_output> <para> The second time it is executed, &SCons; realizes that the &hello; program is up-to-date with respect to the current &hello_c; source file, and avoids rebuilding it. You can see this more clearly by naming the &hello; program explicitly on the command line: </para> <scons_output example="ex1" os="posix"> <command>scons -Q hello</command> <command>scons -Q hello</command> </scons_output> <para> Note that &SCons; reports <literal>"...is up to date"</literal> only for target files named explicitly on the command line, to avoid cluttering the output. </para> <section> <title>Deciding When a Source File Has Changed: the &SourceSignatures; Function</title> <para> The other side of avoiding unnecessary rebuilds is the fundamental build tool behavior of <emphasis>rebuilding</emphasis> things when a source file changes, so that the built software is up to date. &SCons; keeps track of this through a &signature; for each source file, and allows you to configure whether you want to use the source file contents or the modification time (timestamp) as the signature. </para> <section> <title>MD5 Source File Signatures</title> <para> By default, &SCons; keeps track of whether a source file has changed based on the file's contents, not the modification time. This means that you may be surprised by the default &SCons; behavior if you are used to the &Make; convention of forcing a rebuild by updating the file's modification time (using the &touch; command, for example): </para> <scons_output example="ex1" os="posix"> <command>scons -Q hello</command> <command>touch hello.c</command> <command>scons -Q hello</command> </scons_output> <para> Even though the file's modification time has changed, &SCons; realizes that the contents of the &hello_c; file have <emphasis>not</emphasis> changed, and therefore that the &hello; program need not be rebuilt. This avoids unnecessary rebuilds when, for example, someone rewrites the contents of a file without making a change. But if the contents of the file really do change, then &SCons; detects the change and rebuilds the program as required: </para> <scons_output example="ex1" os="posix"> <command>scons -Q hello</command> <command output=" [CHANGE THE CONTENTS OF hello.c]">edit hello.c</command> <command>scons -Q hello</command> </scons_output> <para> Note that you can, if you wish, specify this default behavior (MD5 signatures) explicitly using the &SourceSignatures; function as follows: </para> <sconstruct> Program('hello.c') SourceSignatures('MD5') </sconstruct> </section> <section> <title>Source File Time Stamps</title> <para> If you prefer, you can configure &SCons; to use the modification time of source files, not the file contents, when deciding if something needs to be rebuilt. To do this, call the &SourceSignatures; function as follows: </para> <scons_example name="ex2"> <file name="SConstruct" printme="1"> Program('hello.c') SourceSignatures('timestamp') </file> <file name="hello.c"> int main() { printf("Hello, world!\n"); } </file> </scons_example> <para> This makes &SCons; act like &Make; when a file's modification time is updated (using the &touch; command, for example): </para> <scons_output example="ex2" os="posix"> <command>scons -Q hello</command> <command>touch hello.c</command> <command>scons -Q hello</command> </scons_output> </section> </section> <section> <title>Deciding When a Target File Has Changed: the &TargetSignatures; Function</title> <para> As you've just seen, &SCons; uses signatures to decide whether a target file is up to date or must be rebuilt. When a target file depends on another target file, &SCons; allows you to configure separately how the signatures of "intermediate" target files are used when deciding if a dependent target file must be rebuilt. </para> <section> <title>Build Signatures</title> <para> Modifying a source file will cause not only its direct target file to be rebuilt, but also the target file(s) that depend on that direct target file. In our example, changing the contents of the &hello_c; file causes the &hello_o; file to be rebuilt, which in turn causes the &hello; program to be rebuilt: </para> <scons_output example="ex1" os="posix"> <command>scons -Q hello</command> <command output=" [CHANGE THE CONTENTS OF hello.c]">edit hello.c</command> <command>scons -Q hello</command> </scons_output> <para> What's not obvious, though, is that &SCons; internally handles the signature of the target file(s) (&hello_o; in the above example) differently from the signature of the source file (&hello_c;). By default, &SCons; tracks whether a target file must be rebuilt by using a &buildsignature; that consists of the combined signatures of all the files that go into making the target file. This is efficient because the accumulated signatures actually give &SCons; all of the information it needs to decide if the target file is out of date. </para> <para> If you wish, you can specify this default behavior (build signatures) explicitly using the &TargetSignatures; function: </para> <sconstruct> Program('hello.c') TargetSignatures('build') </sconstruct> </section> <section> <title>File Contents</title> <para> Sometimes a source file can be changed in such a way that the contents of the rebuilt target file(s) will be exactly the same as the last time the file was built. If so, then any other target files that depend on such a built-but-not-changed target file actually need not be rebuilt. You can make &SCons; realize that it does not need to rebuild a dependent target file in this situation using the &TargetSignatures; function as follows: </para> <scons_example name="ex3"> <file name="SConstruct" printme="1"> Program('hello.c') TargetSignatures('content') </file> <file name="hello.c"> int main() { printf("Hello, world!\n"); } </file> </scons_example> <para> So if, for example, a user were to only change a comment in a C file, then the rebuilt &hello_o; file would be exactly the same as the one previously built (assuming the compiler doesn't put any build-specific information in the object file). &SCons; would then realize that it would not need to rebuild the &hello; program as follows: </para> <scons_output example="ex3" os="posix"> <command>scons -Q hello</command> <command output=" [CHANGE A COMMENT IN hello.c]" edit="STRIP CCCOM line">edit hello.c</command> <command>scons -Q hello</command> </scons_output> <para> In essence, &SCons; has "short-circuited" any dependent builds when it realizes that a target file has been rebuilt to exactly the same file as the last build. So configured, &SCons; does take some extra processing time to scan the contents of the target (&hello_o;) file, but this may save time if the rebuild that was avoided would have been very time-consuming and expensive. </para> </section> </section> <section> <title>Implicit Dependencies: The &CPPPATH; Construction Variable</title> <para> Now suppose that our "Hello, World!" program actually has a <literal>#include</literal> line to include the &hello_h; file in the compilation: </para> <scons_example name="ex4"> <file name="SConstruct"> Program('hello.c', CPPPATH = '.') </file> <file name="hello.c" printme="1"> #include <hello.h> int main() { printf("Hello, %s!\n", string); } </file> <file name="hello.h"> #define string "world" </file> </scons_example> <para> And, for completeness, the &hello_h; file looks like this: </para> <scons_example_file example="ex4" name="hello.h"> </scons_example_file> <para> In this case, we want &SCons; to recognize that, if the contents of the &hello_h; file change, the &hello; program must be recompiled. To do this, we need to modify the &SConstruct; file like so: </para> <scons_example_file example="ex4" name="SConstruct"> </scons_example_file> <para> The &CPPPATH; value tells &SCons; to look in the current directory (<literal>'.'</literal>) for any files included by C source files (<filename>.c</filename> or <filename>.h</filename> files). With this assignment in the &SConstruct; file: </para> <scons_output example="ex4" os="posix"> <command>scons -Q hello</command> <command>scons -Q hello</command> <command output=" [CHANGE THE CONTENTS OF hello.h]">edit hello.h</command> <command>scons -Q hello</command> </scons_output> <para> First, notice that &SCons; added the <literal>-I.</literal> argument from the &CPPPATH; variable so that the compilation would find the &hello_h; file in the local directory. </para> <para> Second, realize that &SCons; knows that the &hello; program must be rebuilt because it scans the contents of the &hello_c; file for the <literal>#include</literal> lines that indicate another file is being included in the compilation. &SCons; records these as <emphasis>implicit dependencies</emphasis> of the target file, Consequently, when the &hello_h; file changes, &SCons; realizes that the &hello_c; file includes it, and rebuilds the resulting &hello; program that depends on both the &hello_c; and &hello_h; files. </para> <para> Like the &LIBPATH; variable, the &CPPPATH; variable may be a list of directories, or a string separated by the system-specific path separate character (':' on POSIX/Linux, ';' on Windows). Either way, &SCons; creates the right command-line options so that the following example: </para> <scons_example name="ex5"> <file name="SConstruct" printme="1"> Program('hello.c', CPPPATH = ['include', '/home/project/inc']) </file> <file name="hello.c"> int main() { printf("Hello, world!\n"); } </file> </scons_example> <para> Will look like this on POSIX or Linux: </para> <scons_output example="ex5" os="posix"> <command>scons -Q hello</command> </scons_output> <para> And like this on Windows: </para> <scons_output example="ex5" os="win32"> <command>scons -Q hello.exe</command> </scons_output> </section> <section> <title>Caching Implicit Dependencies</title> <para> Scanning each file for <literal>#include</literal> lines does take some extra processing time. When you're doing a full build of a large system, the scanning time is usually a very small percentage of the overall time spent on the build. You're most likely to notice the scanning time, however, when you <emphasis>rebuild</emphasis> all or part of a large system: &SCons; will likely take some extra time to "think about" what must be built before it issues the first build command (or decides that everything is up to date and nothing must be rebuilt). <!-- Isn't this expensive? The answer is, it depends. If you do a full build of a large system, the scanning time is insignificant. If you do a rebuild of a large system, then Cons will spend a fair amount of time thinking about it before it decides that nothing has to be done (although not necessarily more time than make!). The good news is that Cons makes it very easy to intelligently subset your build, when you are working on localized changes. --> </para> <para> In practice, having &SCons; scan files saves time relative to the amount of potential time lost to tracking down subtle problems introduced by incorrect dependencies. Nevertheless, the "waiting time" while &SCons; scans files can annoy individual developers waiting for their builds to finish. Consequently, &SCons; lets you cache the implicit dependencies that its scanners find, for use by later builds. You can do this by specifying the &implicit-cache; option on the command line: </para> <scons_output example="ex1"> <command>scons -Q --implicit-cache hello</command> <command>scons -Q hello</command> </scons_output> <para> If you don't want to specify &implicit-cache; on the command line each time, you can make it the default behavior for your build by setting the &implicit_cache; option in an &SConscript; file: </para> <sconstruct> SetOption('implicit_cache', 1) </sconstruct> <!-- <para> XXX </para> <para> &SCons; does not cache implicit dependencies like this by default because XXX </para> --> <section> <title>The &implicit-deps-changed; Option</title> <para> When using cached implicit dependencies, sometimes you want to "start fresh" and have &SCons; re-scan the files for which it previously cached the dependencies. For example, if you have recently installed a new version of external code that you use for compilation, the external header files will have changed and the previously-cached implicit dependencies will be out of date. You can update them by running &SCons; with the &implicit-deps-changed; option: </para> <scons_output example="ex1"> <command>scons -Q --implicit-deps-changed hello</command> <command>scons -Q hello</command> </scons_output> <para> In this case, &SCons; will re-scan all of the implicit dependencies and cache updated copies of the information. </para> </section> <section> <title>The &implicit-deps-unchanged; Option</title> <para> By default when caching dependencies, &SCons; notices when a file has been modified and re-scans the file for any updated implicit dependency information. Sometimes, however, you may want to force &SCons; to use the cached implicit dependencies, even if the source files changed. This can speed up a build for example, when you have changed your source files but know that you haven't changed any <literal>#include</literal> lines. In this case, you can use the &implicit-deps-unchanged; option: </para> <scons_output example="ex1"> <command>scons -Q --implicit-deps-unchanged hello</command> <command>scons -Q hello</command> </scons_output> <para> In this case, &SCons; will assume that the cached implicit dependencies are correct and will not bother to re-scan changed files. For typical builds after small, incremental changes to source files, the savings may not be very big, but sometimes every bit of improved performance counts. </para> </section> </section> <section> <title>Ignoring Dependencies: the &Ignore; Method</title> <para> Sometimes it makes sense to not rebuild a program, even if a dependency file changes. In this case, you would tell &SCons; specifically to ignore a dependency as follows: </para> <scons_example name="ignore"> <file name="SConstruct" printme="1"> hello = Program('hello.c') Ignore(hello, 'hello.h') </file> <file name="hello.c"> #include "hello.h" int main() { printf("Hello, %s!\n", string); } </file> <file name="hello.h"> #define string "world" </file> </scons_example> <!-- XXX mention that you can use arrays for target and source? --> <!-- <scons_output example="ignore"> <command>scons -Q hello</command> <command>scons -Q hello</command> <command output=" [CHANGE THE CONTENTS OF hello.h]">edit hello.h</command> <command>scons -Q hello</command> XXX THIS EXAMPLE SHOULD BE UP-TO-DATE! XXX </scons_output> --> <screen> % <userinput>scons -Q hello</userinput> cc -c -o hello.o hello.c cc -o hello hello.o % <userinput>scons -Q hello</userinput> scons: `hello' is up to date. % <userinput>edit hello.h</userinput> [CHANGE THE CONTENTS OF hello.h] % <userinput>scons -Q hello</userinput> scons: `hello' is up to date. </screen> <para> Now, the above example is a little contrived, because it's hard to imagine a real-world situation where you wouldn't to rebuild &hello; if the &hello_h; file changed. A more realistic example might be if the &hello; program is being built in a directory that is shared between multiple systems that have different copies of the &stdio_h; include file. In that case, &SCons; would notice the differences between the different systems' copies of &stdio_h; and would rebuild &hello; each time you change systems. You could avoid these rebuilds as follows: </para> <programlisting> hello = Program('hello.c') Ignore(hello, '/usr/include/stdio.h') </programlisting> </section> <section> <title>Explicit Dependencies: the &Depends; Method</title> <para> On the other hand, sometimes a file depends on another file that is not detected by an &SCons; scanner. For this situation, &SCons; allows you to specific explicitly that one file depends on another file, and must be rebuilt whenever that file changes. This is specified using the &Depends; method: </para> <programlisting> hello = Program('hello.c') Depends(hello, 'other_file') </programlisting> <!-- XXX mention that you can use arrays for target and source? --> <screen> % <userinput>scons -Q hello</userinput> cc -c hello.c -o hello.o cc -o hello hello.o % <userinput>scons -Q hello</userinput> scons: `hello' is up to date. % <userinput>edit other_file</userinput> [CHANGE THE CONTENTS OF other_file] % <userinput>scons -Q hello</userinput> cc -c hello.c -o hello.o cc -o hello hello.o </screen> </section> <!--> <section> <title>The &Salt; Method</title> <para> XXX </para> </section> -->