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<para>
So far we've seen how &SCons; handles one-time builds.
But one of the main functions 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 by 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">
<scons_output_command>scons -Q</scons_output_command>
<scons_output_command>scons -Q</scons_output_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">
<scons_output_command>scons -Q hello</scons_output_command>
<scons_output_command>scons -Q hello</scons_output_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 an Input File Has Changed: the &Decider; Function</title>
<para>
Another aspect of avoiding unnecessary rebuilds
is the fundamental build tool behavior
of <emphasis>rebuilding</emphasis>
things when an input file changes,
so that the built software is up to date.
By default,
&SCons; keeps track of this through an
MD5 &signature;, or checksum, of the contents of each file,
although you can easily configure
&SCons; to use the
modification times (or time stamps)
instead.
You can even specify your own Python function
for deciding if an input file has changed.
</para>
<section>
<title>Using MD5 Signatures to Decide if a File Has Changed</title>
<para>
By default,
&SCons; keeps track of whether a file has changed
based on an MD5 checksum of the file's contents,
not the file's 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">
<scons_output_command>scons -Q hello</scons_output_command>
<scons_output_command>touch hello.c</scons_output_command>
<scons_output_command>scons -Q hello</scons_output_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">
<scons_output_command>scons -Q hello</scons_output_command>
<scons_output_command output=" [CHANGE THE CONTENTS OF hello.c]">edit hello.c</scons_output_command>
<scons_output_command>scons -Q hello</scons_output_command>
</scons_output>
<para>
Note that you can, if you wish,
specify this default behavior
(MD5 signatures) explicitly
using the &Decider; function as follows:
</para>
<sconstruct>
Program('hello.c')
Decider('MD5')
</sconstruct>
<para>
You can also use the string <literal>'content'</literal>
as a synonym for <literal>'MD5'</literal>
when calling the &Decider; function.
</para>
<section>
<title>Ramifications of Using MD5 Signatures</title>
<para>
Using MD5 Signatures to decide if an input file has changed
has one surprising benefit:
if a source file has been 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,
then any "downstream" target files
that depend on the rebuilt-but-not-changed target
file actually need not be rebuilt.
</para>
<para>
So if, for example,
a user were to only change a comment in a &hello_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="ex1" os="posix">
<scons_output_command>scons -Q hello</scons_output_command>
<scons_output_command output=" [CHANGE A COMMENT IN hello.c]" edit="STRIP CCCOM line">edit hello.c</scons_output_command>
<scons_output_command>scons -Q hello</scons_output_command>
</scons_output>
<para>
In essence, &SCons;
"short-circuits" any dependent builds
when it realizes that a target file
has been rebuilt to exactly the same file as the last build.
This does take some extra processing time
to read the contents of the target (&hello_o;) file,
but often saves time when the rebuild that was avoided
would have been time-consuming and expensive.
</para>
</section>
</section>
<section>
<title>Using Time Stamps to Decide If a File Has Changed</title>
<para>
If you prefer, you can
configure &SCons; to use the modification time
of a file, not the file contents,
when deciding if a target needs to be rebuilt.
&SCons; gives you two ways to use time stamps
to decide if an input file has changed
since the last time a target has been built.
</para>
<para>
The most familiar way to use time stamps
is the way &Make; does:
that is, have &SCons; decide
and target must be rebuilt if
if a source file's modification time is
<emphasis>newer</emphasis>
than the target file.
To do this, call the &Decider;
function as follows:
</para>
<scons_example name="newer">
<file name="SConstruct" printme="1">
Program('hello.c')
Decider('timestamp-newer')
</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="newer" os="posix">
<scons_output_command>scons -Q hello</scons_output_command>
<scons_output_command>touch hello.c</scons_output_command>
<scons_output_command>scons -Q hello</scons_output_command>
</scons_output>
<para>
And, in fact, because this behavior is the same
as the behavior of &Make;,
you can also use the string <literal>'make'</literal>
as a synonym for <literal>'timestamp-newer'</literal>
when calling the &Decider; function:
</para>
<sconstruct>
Program('hello.c')
Decider('make')
</sconstruct>
<para>
One drawback to using times stamps exactly like &Make;
is that if an input file's modification time suddenly
becomes <emphasis>older</emphasis> than a target file,
the target file will not be rebuilt.
This can happen if an old copy of a source file is restored
from a backup archive, for example.
The contents of the restored file will likely be different
than they were the last time a dependent target was built,
but the target won't be rebuilt
because the modification time of the source file
is not newer than the target.
</para>
<para>
Because &SCons; actually stores information
about the source files' time stamps whenever a target is built,
it can handle this situation by checking for
an exact match of the source file time stamp,
instead of just whether or not the source file
is newer than the target file.
To do this, specify the argument
<literal>'timestamp-match'</literal>
when calling the &Decider; function:
</para>
<scons_example name="match">
<file name="SConstruct" printme="1">
Program('hello.c')
Decider('timestamp-match')
</file>
<file name="hello.c">
int main() { printf("Hello, world!\n"); }
</file>
</scons_example>
<para>
When configured this way,
&SCons; will rebuild a target whenever
a source file's modification time has changed.
So if we use the <literal>touch -t</literal>
option to change the modification time of
&hello_c; to an old date (January 1, 1989),
&SCons; will still rebuild the target file:
</para>
<scons_output example="match" os="posix">
<scons_output_command>scons -Q hello</scons_output_command>
<scons_output_command>touch -t 198901010000 hello.c</scons_output_command>
<scons_output_command>scons -Q hello</scons_output_command>
</scons_output>
<para>
In general, the only reason to prefer
<literal>timestamp-newer</literal>
instead of
<literal>timestamp-match</literal>,
would be if you have some specific reason
to require this &Make;-like behavior of
not rebuilding a target when an otherwise-modified
source file is older.
</para>
</section>
<section>
<title>Deciding If a File Has Changed Using Both MD Signatures and Time Stamps</title>
<para>
As a performance enhancement,
&SCons; provides a way to use
MD5 checksums of file contents
but to only read the contents
whenever the file's timestamp has changed.
To do this, call the &Decider;
function with <literal>'MD5-timestamp'</literal>
argument as follows:
</para>
<scons_example name="MD5-timestamp">
<file name="SConstruct" printme="1">
Program('hello.c')
Decider('MD5-timestamp')
</file>
<file name="hello.c">
int main() { printf("Hello, world!\n"); }
</file>
</scons_example>
<para>
So configured, &SCons will still behave like
it does when using <literal>Decider('MD5')</literal>:
</para>
<!--
We want to generate the output as follows,
but our "surrogate" system for generating the
output seems to get this wrong.
Just in-line the output for now.
<scons_output example="MD5-timestamp" os="posix">
<scons_output_command>scons -Q hello</scons_output_command>
<scons_output_command>touch hello.c</scons_output_command>
<scons_output_command>scons -Q hello</scons_output_command>
<scons_output_command output=" [CHANGE THE CONTENTS OF hello.c]">edit hello.c</scons_output_command>
<scons_output_command>scons -Q hello</scons_output_command>
</scons_output>
-->
<screen>
% <userinput>scons -Q hello</userinput>
cc -o hello.o -c hello.c
cc -o hello hello.o
% <userinput>touch hello.c</userinput>
% <userinput>scons -Q hello</userinput>
scons: `hello' is up to date.
% <userinput>edit hello.c</userinput>
[CHANGE THE CONTENTS OF hello.c]
% <userinput>scons -Q hello</userinput>
cc -o hello.o -c hello.c
cc -o hello hello.o
</screen>
<para>
However, the second call to &SCons; in the above output,
when the build is up-to-date,
will have been performed by simply looking at the
modification time of the &hello_c; file,
not by opening it and performing
an MD5 checksum calcuation on its contents.
This can significantly speed up many up-to-date builds.
</para>
<para>
The only drawback to using
<literal>Decider('MD5-timestamp')</literal>
is that &SCons; will <emphasis>not</emphasis>
rebuild a target file if a source file was modified
within one second of the last time &SCons; built the file.
While most developers are programming,
this isn't a problem in practice,
since it's unlikely that someone will have built
and then thought quickly enought to make a substantive
change to a source file within one second.
Certain build scripts or
continuous integration tools may, however,
rely on the ability to applying changes to files
automatically and then rebuild as quickly as possible,
in which case use of
<literal>Decider('MD5-timestamp')</literal>
may not be appropriate.
</para>
</section>
<section>
<title>Writing Your Own Custom &Decider; Function</title>
<para>
The different string values that we've passed to
the &Decider; function are essentially used by &SCons;
to pick one of several specific internal functions
that implement various ways of deciding if a dependency
(usually a source file)
has changed since a target file has been built.
As it turns out,
you can also supply your own function
to decide if a dependency has changed.
</para>
<para>
For example, suppose we have an input file
that contains a lot of data,
in some specific regular format,
that is used to rebuild a lot of different target files,
but each target file really only depends on
one particular section of the input file.
We'd like to have each target file depend on
only its section of the input file.
However, since the input file may contain a lot of data,
we only want to open the input file if its timestamp has changed.
This could done with a custom
&Decider; function that might look something like this:
</para>
<scons_example name="function">
<file name="SConstruct" printme="1">
Program('hello.c')
def decide_if_changed(dependency, target, prev_ni):
if self.get_timestamp() != prev_ni.timestamp:
dep = str(dependency)
tgt = str(target)
if specific_part_of_file_has_changed(dep, tgt):
return True
return False
Decider(decide_if_changed)
</file>
<file name="hello.c">
int main() { printf("Hello, world!\n"); }
</file>
</scons_example>
<para>
Note that in the function definition,
the <varname>dependency</varname>
(input file) is the first argument,
and then the ⌖.
Both of these are passed to the functions as
SCons &Node; objects,
which we convert to strings using the Python
<function>str()</function>.
</para>
<para>
The third argument, <varname>prev_ni</varname>,
is an object that holds the
signature or timestamp information
that was recorded about the dependency
the last time the target was built.
A <varname>prev_ni</varname> object can hold
different information,
depending on the type of thing that the
<varname>dependency</varname> argument represents.
For normal files,
the <varname>prev_ni</varname> object
has the following attributes:
</para>
<variablelist>
<varlistentry>
<term>.csig</term>
<listitem>
<para>
The <emphasis>content signature</emphasis>,
or MD5 checksum, of the contents of the
<varname>dependency</varname>
file the list time the ⌖ was built.
</para>
</listitem>
</varlistentry>
<varlistentry>
<term>.size</term>
<listitem>
<para>
The size in bytes of the <varname>dependency</varname>
file the list time the target was built.
</para>
</listitem>
</varlistentry>
<varlistentry>
<term>.timestamp</term>
<listitem>
<para>
The modification time of the <varname>dependency</varname>
file the list time the ⌖ was built.
</para>
</listitem>
</varlistentry>
</variablelist>
<para>
Note that ignoring some of the arguments
in your custom &Decider; function
is a perfectly normal thing to do,
if they don't impact the way you want to
decide if the dependency file has changed.
</para>
</section>
<section>
<title>Mixing Different Ways of Deciding If a File Has Changed</title>
<para>
The previous examples have all demonstrated calling
the global &Decider; function
to configure all dependency decisions that &SCons; makes.
Sometimes, however, you want to be able to configure
different decision-making for different targets.
When that's necessary, you can use the
<function>env.Decider</function>
method to affect only the configuration
decisions for targets built with a
specific construction environment.
</para>
<para>
For example, if we arbitrarily want to build
one program using MD5 checkums
and another use file modification times
from the same source
we might configure it this way:
</para>
<scons_example name="mixing">
<file name="SConstruct" printme="1">
env1 = Environment(CPPPATH = ['.'])
env2 = env1.Clone()
env2.Decider('timestamp-match')
env1.Program('prog-MD5', 'program1.c')
env2.Program('prog-timestamp', 'program2.c')
</file>
<file name="program1.c">
#include "inc.h"
int main() { printf("Hello, world!\n"); }
</file>
<file name="program2.c">
#include "inc.h"
int main() { printf("Hello, world!\n"); }
</file>
<file name="inc.h">
#define INC 1
</file>
</scons_example>
<para>
If both of the programs include the same
<filename>inc.h</filename> file,
then updating the modification time of
<filename>inc.h</filename>
(using the &touch; command)
will cause only <filename>prog-timestamp</filename>
to be rebuilt:
</para>
<scons_output example="mixing" os="posix">
<scons_output_command>scons -Q</scons_output_command>
<scons_output_command>touch inc.h</scons_output_command>
<scons_output_command>scons -Q</scons_output_command>
</scons_output>
</section>
</section>
<section>
<title>Older Functions for Deciding When an Input File Has Changed</title>
<para>
&SCons; still supports two functions that used to be the
primary methods for configuring the
decision about whether or not an input file has changed.
Although they're not officially deprecated yet,
their use is discouraged,
mainly because they rely on a somewhat
confusing distinction between how
source files and target files are handled.
These functions are documented here mainly in case you
encounter them in existing &SConscript; files.
</para>
<section>
<title>The &SourceSignatures; Function</title>
<para>
The &SourceSignatures; function is fairly straightforward,
and supports two different argument values
to configure whether source file changes should be decided
using MD5 signatures:
</para>
<sconstruct>
Program('hello.c')
SourceSignatures('MD5')
</sconstruct>
<para>
Or using time stamps:
</para>
<sconstruct>
Program('hello.c')
SourceSignatures('timestamp')
</sconstruct>
<para>
These are roughly equivalent to specifying
<function>Decider('MD5')</function>
or
<function>Decider('timestamp-match')</function>,
respectively,
although it only affects how SCons makes
decisions about dependencies on
<emphasis>source</emphasis> files--that is,
files that are not built from any other files.
</para>
</section>
<section>
<title>The &TargetSignatures; Function</title>
<para>
The &TargetSignatures; function
specifies how &SCons; decides
when a target file has changed
<emphasis>when it is used as a
dependency of (input to) another target</emphasis>--that is,
the &TargetSignatures; function configures
how the signatures of "intermediate" target files
are used when deciding if a "downstream" target file
must be rebuilt.
<footnote><para>
This easily-overlooked distinction between
how &SCons; decides if the target itself must be rebuilt
and how the target is then used to decide if a different
target must be rebuilt is one of the confusing
things that has led to the &TargetSignatures;
and &SourceSignatures; functions being
replaced by the simpler &Decider; function.
</para></footnote>
</para>
<para>
The &TargetSignatures; function supports the same
<literal>'MD5'</literal> and <literal>'timestamp'</literal>
argument values that are supported by the &SourceSignatures;,
with the same meanings, but applied to target files.
That is, in the example:
</para>
<sconstruct>
Program('hello.c')
TargetSignatures('MD5')
</sconstruct>
<para>
The MD5 checksum of the &hello_o; target file
will be used to decide if it has changed since the last
time the "downstream" &hello; target file was built.
And in the example:
</para>
<sconstruct>
Program('hello.c')
TargetSignatures('timestamp')
</sconstruct>
<para>
The modification time of the &hello_o; target file
will be used to decide if it has changed since the last
time the "downstream" &hello; target file was built.
</para>
<para>
The &TargetSignatures; function supports
two additional argument values:
<literal>'source'</literal> and <literal>'build'</literal>.
The <literal>'source'</literal> argument
specifies that decisions involving
whether target files have changed
since a previous build
should use the same behavior
for the decisions configured for source files
(using the &SourceSignatures; function).
So in the example:
</para>
<sconstruct>
Program('hello.c')
TargetSignatures('source')
SourceSignatures('timestamp')
</sconstruct>
<para>
All files, both targets and sources,
will use modification times
when deciding if an input file
has changed since the last
time a target was built.
</para>
<para>
Lastly, the <literal>'build'</literal> argument
specifies that &SCons; should examine
the build status of a target file
and always rebuild a "downstream" target
if the target file was itself rebuilt,
without re-examining the contents or timestamp
of the newly-built target file.
If the target file was not rebuilt during
this &scons; invocation,
then the target file will be examined
the same way as configured by
the &SourceSignature; call
to decide if it has changed.
</para>
<para>
This mimics the behavior of
<literal>build signatures</literal>
in earlier versions of &SCons;.
A &buildsignature; re-combined
signatures of all the input files
that went into making the target file,
so that the target file itself
did not need to have its contents read
to compute an MD5 signature.
This can improve performance for some configurations,
but is generally not as effective as using
<literal>Decider('MD5-timestamp')</literal>.
</para>
</section>
</section>
<section>
<title>Implicit Dependencies: The &cv-CPPPATH; Construction Variable</title>
<para>
Now suppose that our "Hello, World!" program
actually has an <literal>#include</literal> line
to include the &hello_h; file in the compilation:
</para>
<scons_example name="include">
<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="include" 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="include" name="SConstruct">
</scons_example_file>
<para>
The &cv-link-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="include" os="posix">
<scons_output_command>scons -Q hello</scons_output_command>
<scons_output_command>scons -Q hello</scons_output_command>
<scons_output_command output=" [CHANGE THE CONTENTS OF hello.h]">edit hello.h</scons_output_command>
<scons_output_command>scons -Q hello</scons_output_command>
</scons_output>
<para>
First, notice that &SCons;
added the <literal>-I.</literal> argument
from the &cv-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 &cv-link-LIBPATH; variable,
the &cv-CPPPATH; variable
may be a list of directories,
or a string separated by
the system-specific path separation 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">
<scons_output_command>scons -Q hello</scons_output_command>
</scons_output>
<para>
And like this on Windows:
</para>
<scons_output example="ex5" os="win32">
<scons_output_command>scons -Q hello.exe</scons_output_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">
<scons_output_command>scons -Q --implicit-cache hello</scons_output_command>
<scons_output_command>scons -Q hello</scons_output_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>
&SCons; does not cache implicit dependencies like this by default
because the &implicit-cache; causes &SCons; to simply use the implicit
dependencies stored during the last run, without any checking
for whether or not those dependencies are still correct.
Specifically, this means &implicit-cache; instructs &SCons;
to <emphasis>not</emphasis> rebuild "correctly" in the
following cases:
</para>
<itemizedlist>
<listitem>
<para>
When &implicit-cache; is used, &SCons; will ignore any changes that
may have been made to search paths
(like &cv-CPPPATH; or &cv-LIBPATH;,).
This can lead to &SCons; not rebuilding a file if a change to
&cv-CPPPATH; would normally cause a different, same-named file from
a different directory to be used.
</para>
</listitem>
<listitem>
<para>
When &implicit-cache; is used, &SCons; will not detect if a
same-named file has been added to a directory that is earlier in
the search path than the directory in which the file was found
last time.
</para>
</listitem>
</itemizedlist>
<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">
<scons_output_command>scons -Q --implicit-deps-changed hello</scons_output_command>
<scons_output_command>scons -Q hello</scons_output_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">
<scons_output_command>scons -Q --implicit-deps-unchanged hello</scons_output_command>
<scons_output_command>scons -Q hello</scons_output_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>
<title>XXX max drift</title>
XXX SetOption('max_drift')
</section>
-->
</section>
<section>
<title>Explicit Dependencies: the &Depends; Function</title>
<para>
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>
<para>
Note that the dependency
(the second argument to &Depends;)
may also be a list of Node objects
(for example, as returned by a call to a Builder):
</para>
<programlisting>
hello = Program('hello.c')
goodbye = Program('goodbye.c')
Depends(hello, goodbye)
</programlisting>
<para>
in which case the dependency or dependencies
will be built before the target(s):
</para>
<screen>
% <userinput>scons -Q hello</userinput>
cc -c goodbye.c -o goodbye.o
cc -o goodbye goodbye.o
cc -c hello.c -o hello.o
cc -o hello hello.o
</screen>
</section>
<section>
<title>Dependencies From External Files: the &ParseDepends;
Function</title>
<para>
&SCons; has built-in scanners for a number of languages. Sometimes
these scanners fail to extract certain implicit dependencies due
to limitations of the scanner implementation.
</para>
<para>
The following example illustrates a case where the built-in C
scanner is unable to extract the implicit dependency on a header
file.
</para>
<scons_example name="macroinc">
<file name="hello.c" printme="1">
#define FOO_HEADER <foo.h>
#include FOO_HEADER
int main() {
return FOO;
}
</file>
<file name="SConstruct">
Program('hello', 'hello.c', CPPPATH='.')
</file>
<file name="foo.h">
#define FOO 42
</file>
</scons_example>
<scons_output example="macroinc" os="posix">
<scons_output_command>scons -Q</scons_output_command>
<scons_output_command output=" [CHANGE CONTENTS OF foo.h]"
>edit foo.h</scons_output_command>
<scons_output_command>scons -Q</scons_output_command>
</scons_output>
<para>
Apparently, the scanner does not know about the header dependency.
Being not a full-fledged C preprocessor, the scanner does not
expand the macro.
</para>
<para>
In these cases, you may also use the compiler to extract the
implicit dependencies. &ParseDepends; can parse the contents of
the compiler output in the style of &Make;, and explicitly
establish all of the listed dependencies.
</para>
<para>
The following example uses &ParseDepends; to process a compiler
generated dependency file which is generated as a side effect
during compilation of the object file:
</para>
<!-- XXX The ParseDepends example below fakes proper working by a
priori specification of the dependency file. The produced hello.d
file is not found (or used) for unknown reasons. -->
<scons_example name="parsedep">
<file name="hello.c">
#define FOO_HEADER <foo.h>
#include FOO_HEADER
int main() {
return FOO;
}
</file>
<file name="SConstruct" printme="1">
obj = Object('hello.c', CCFLAGS='-MD -MF hello.d', CPPPATH='.')
SideEffect('hello.d', obj)
ParseDepends('hello.d')
Program('hello', obj)
</file>
<file name="foo.h">
#define FOO 42
</file>
<file name="hello.d">
hello.o: hello.c foo.h
</file>
</scons_example>
<scons_output example="parsedep" os="posix">
<scons_output_command>scons -Q</scons_output_command>
<scons_output_command output=" [CHANGE CONTENTS OF foo.h]"
>edit foo.h</scons_output_command>
<scons_output_command>scons -Q</scons_output_command>
</scons_output>
<para>
Parsing dependencies from a compiler-generated
<filename>.d</filename> file has a chicken-and-egg problem, that
causes unnecessary rebuilds:
</para>
<scons_example name="parsedeprebuild">
<file name="hello.c">
#define FOO_HEADER <foo.h>
#include FOO_HEADER
int main() {
return FOO;
}
</file>
<file name="SConstruct">
obj = Object('hello.c', CCFLAGS='-MD -MF hello.d', CPPPATH='.')
SideEffect('hello.d', obj)
ParseDepends('hello.d')
Program('hello', obj)
</file>
<file name="foo.h">
#define FOO 42
</file>
</scons_example>
<!--
<scons_output example="parsedeprebuild" os="posix">
<scons_output_command>scons -Q</scons_output_command>
<scons_output_command>scons -Q</scons_output_command>
<scons_output_command>scons -Q</scons_output_command>
</scons_output>
-->
<screen>
% <userinput>scons -Q</userinput>
cc -o hello.o -c -MD -MF hello.d -I. hello.c
cc -o hello hello.o
% <userinput>scons -Q --debug=explain</userinput>
scons: rebuilding `hello.o' because `foo.h' is a new dependency
cc -o hello.o -c -MD -MF hello.d -I. hello.c
% <userinput>scons -Q</userinput>
scons: `.' is up to date.
</screen>
<para>
In the first pass, the dependency file is generated while the
object file is compiled. At that time, &SCons; does not know about
the dependency on <filename>foo.h</filename>. In the second pass,
the object file is regenerated because <filename>foo.h</filename>
is detected as a new dependency.
</para>
<para>
&ParseDepends; immediately reads the specified file at invocation
time and just returns if the file does not exist. A dependency
file generated during the build process is not automatically
parsed again. Hence, the compiler-extracted dependencies are not
stored in the signature database during the same build pass. This
limitation of &ParseDepends; leads to unnecessary recompilations.
Therefore, &ParseDepends; should only be used if scanners are not
available for the employed language or not powerful enough for the
specific task.
</para>
</section>
<section>
<title>Ignoring Dependencies: the &Ignore; Function</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 lists for target and source? -->
<!--
<scons_output example="ignore">
<scons_output_command>scons -Q hello</scons_output_command>
<scons_output_command>scons -Q hello</scons_output_command>
<scons_output_command output=" [CHANGE THE CONTENTS OF hello.h]">edit hello.h</scons_output_command>
<scons_output_command>scons -Q hello</scons_output_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 want 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', CPPPATH=['/usr/include'])
Ignore(hello, '/usr/include/stdio.h')
</programlisting>
<para>
&Ignore; can also be used to prevent a generated file from being built
by default. This is due to the fact that directories depend on
their contents. So to ignore a generated file from the default build,
you specify that the directory should ignore the generated file.
Note that the file will still be built if the user specifically
requests the target on scons command line, or if the file is
a dependency of another file which is requested and/or is built
by default.
</para>
<scons_example name="ignore_explicit">
<file name="SConstruct" printme="1">
hello_obj=Object('hello.c')
hello = Program(hello_obj)
Ignore('.',[hello,hello_obj])
</file>
<file name="hello.c">
#include "stdio.h"
int main() { printf("Hello!\n"); }
</file>
</scons_example>
<scons_output example="ignore_explicit" os="posix">
<scons_output_command>scons -Q</scons_output_command>
<scons_output_command>scons -Q hello</scons_output_command>
<scons_output_command>scons -Q hello</scons_output_command>
</scons_output>
</section>
<section>
<title>Order-Only Dependencies: the &Requires; Function</title>
<para>
Occasionally,
it may be useful to specify that a certain
file or directory must, if necessary,
be built or created before some other target is built,
but that changes to that file or directory
do <emphasis>not</emphasis>
require that the target itself be rebuilt.
Such a relationship is called an
<emphasis>order-only dependency</emphasis>
because it only affects the order in which
things must be built--the dependency before the target--but
it is not a strict dependency relationship
because the target should not
change in response to changes in the dependent file.
</para>
<para>
For example, suppose that you want to create a file
every time you run a build
that identifies the time the build was performed,
the version number, etc.,
and which is included in every program that you build.
The version file's contents will change every build.
If you specify a normal dependency relationship,
then every program that depends on
that file would be rebuilt every time you ran &SCons;.
For example, we could use some Python code in
a &SConstruct; file to create a new <filename>version.c</filename> file
with a string containing the current date every time
we run &SCons;,
and then link a program with the resulting object file
by listing <filename>version.c</filename> in the sources:
</para>
<scons_example name="no-Requires">
<file name="SConstruct" printme="1">
import time
version_c_text = """
char *date = "%s";
""" % time.ctime(time.time())
open('version.c', 'w').write(version_c_text)
hello = Program(['hello.c', 'version.c'])
</file>
<file name="hello.c">
extern char *date;
int main() { printf("Hello, %s! I was built: %s\n", date); }
</file>
</scons_example>
<para>
If we list <filename>version.c</filename> as an actual source file,
though, then <filename>version.o</filename>
will get rebuilt every time we run &SCons;
(because the &SConstruct; file itself changes
the contents of <filename>version.c</filename>)
and the <filename>hello</filename> executable
will get re-linked every time
(because the <filename>version.o</filename> file changes):
</para>
<!--
<scons_output example="no-Requires">
<scons_output_command>scons -Q</scons_output_command>
<scons_output_command>scons -Q</scons_output_command>
</scons_output>
-->
<screen>
% <userinput>scons -Q</userinput>
gcc -o hello.o -c hello.c
gcc -o version.o -c version.c
gcc -o hello hello.o version.o
% <userinput>scons -Q</userinput>
gcc -o version.o -c version.c
gcc -o hello hello.o version.o
% <userinput>scons -Q</userinput>
gcc -o version.o -c version.c
gcc -o hello hello.o version.o
</screen>
<para>
One solution is to use the &Requires; function
to specify that the <filename>version.o</filename>
must be rebuilt before it is used by the link step,
but that changes to <filename>version.o</filename>
should not actually cause the <filename>hello</filename>
executable to be re-linked:
</para>
<scons_example name="Requires">
<file name="SConstruct" printme="1">
import time
version_c_text = """
char *date = "%s";
""" % time.ctime(time.time())
open('version.c', 'w').write(version_c_text)
version_obj = Object('version.c')
hello = Program('hello.c',
LINKFLAGS = str(version_obj[0]))
Requires(hello, version_obj)
</file>
<file name="hello.c">
extern char *date;
int main() { printf("Hello, %s! I was built: %s\n", date); }
</file>
</scons_example>
<para>
Notice that because we can no longer list <filename>version.c</filename>
as one of the sources for the <filename>hello</filename> program,
we have to find some other way to get it into the link command line.
For this example, we're cheating a bit and stuffing the
object file name (extracted from <literal>version_obj</literal>
list returned by the &b-Object; call)
into the &cv-link-LINKFLAGS; variable,
because &cv-LINKFLAGS; is already included
in the &cv-link-LINKCOM; command line.
</para>
<para>
With these changes,
we get the desired behavior of
re-building the <filename>version.o</filename> file,
and therefore re-linking the <filename>hello</filename> executable,
only when the <filename>hello.c</filename> has changed:
</para>
<scons_output example="Requires">
<scons_output_command>scons -Q</scons_output_command>
<scons_output_command>scons -Q</scons_output_command>
<scons_output_command output=" [CHANGE THE CONTENTS OF hello.c]">edit hello.c</scons_output_command>
<scons_output_command>scons -Q</scons_output_command>
<scons_output_command>scons -Q</scons_output_command>
</scons_output>
</section>
<section>
<title>The &AlwaysBuild; Function</title>
<para>
How &SCons; handles dependencies can also be affected
by the &AlwaysBuild; method.
When a file is passed to the &AlwaysBuild; method,
like so:
</para>
<scons_example name="AlwaysBuild">
<file name="SConstruct" printme="1">
hello = Program('hello.c')
AlwaysBuild(hello)
</file>
<file name="hello.c">
int main() { printf("Hello, %s!\n", string); }
</file>
</scons_example>
<para>
Then the specified target file (&hello; in our example)
will always be considered out-of-date and
rebuilt whenever that target file is evaluated
while walking the dependency graph:
</para>
<scons_output example="AlwaysBuild">
<scons_output_command>scons -Q</scons_output_command>
<scons_output_command>scons -Q</scons_output_command>
</scons_output>
<para>
The &AlwaysBuild; function has a somewhat misleading name,
because it does not actually mean the target file will
be rebuilt every single time &SCons; is invoked.
Instead, it means that the target will, in fact,
be rebuilt whenever the target file is encountered
while evaluating the targets specified on
the command line (and their dependencies).
So specifying some other target on the command line,
a target that does <emphasis>not</emphasis>
itself depend on the &AlwaysBuild; target,
will still be rebuilt only if it's out-of-date
with respect to its dependencies:
</para>
<scons_output example="AlwaysBuild">
<scons_output_command>scons -Q</scons_output_command>
<scons_output_command>scons -Q hello.o</scons_output_command>
</scons_output>
<!--
XXX AlwaysBuild() and Alias Nodes
XXX AlwaysBuild() and Dir Nodes
XXX AlwaysBuild() with no sources
-->
</section>
<!--
<section>
<title>The &Salt; Method</title>
<para>
XXX Salt() (are we going to implement this ?)
original Cons classic POD documentation:
=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>
</section>
-->