<?xml version='1.0'?> <!DOCTYPE sconsdoc [ <!ENTITY % scons SYSTEM "../scons.mod"> %scons; <!ENTITY % builders-mod SYSTEM "../generated/builders.mod"> %builders-mod; <!ENTITY % functions-mod SYSTEM "../generated/functions.mod"> %functions-mod; <!ENTITY % tools-mod SYSTEM "../generated/tools.mod"> %tools-mod; <!ENTITY % variables-mod SYSTEM "../generated/variables.mod"> %variables-mod; ]> <chapter id="chap-factories" xmlns="http://www.scons.org/dbxsd/v1.0" xmlns:xsi="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema-instance" xsi:schemaLocation="http://www.scons.org/dbxsd/v1.0 http://www.scons.org/dbxsd/v1.0/scons.xsd"> <title>Platform-Independent File System Manipulation</title> <!-- __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> &SCons; provides a number of platform-independent functions, called <literal>factories</literal>, that perform common file system manipulations like copying, moving or deleting files and directories, or making directories. These functions are <literal>factories</literal> because they don't perform the action at the time they're called, they each return an &Action; object that can be executed at the appropriate time. </para> <section> <title>Copying Files or Directories: The &Copy; Factory</title> <para> Suppose you want to arrange to make a copy of a file, and don't have a suitable pre-existing builder. <footnote> <para> Unfortunately, in the early days of SCons design, we used the name &Copy; for the function that returns a copy of the environment, otherwise that would be the logical choice for a Builder that copies a file or directory tree to a target location. </para> </footnote> One way would be to use the &Copy; action factory in conjunction with the &Command; builder: </para> <scons_example name="factories_Copy1"> <file name="SConstruct" printme="1"> Command("file.out", "file.in", Copy("$TARGET", "$SOURCE")) </file> <file name="file.in">file.in</file> </scons_example> <para> Notice that the action returned by the &Copy; factory will expand the &cv-link-TARGET; and &cv-link-SOURCE; strings at the time &file_out; is built, and that the order of the arguments is the same as that of a builder itself--that is, target first, followed by source: </para> <scons_output example="factories_Copy1" suffix="1"> <scons_output_command>scons -Q</scons_output_command> </scons_output> <para> You can, of course, name a file explicitly instead of using &cv-TARGET; or &cv-SOURCE;: </para> <scons_example name="factories_Copy2"> <file name="SConstruct" printme="1"> Command("file.out", [], Copy("$TARGET", "file.in")) </file> <file name="file.in">file.in</file> </scons_example> <para> Which executes as: </para> <scons_output example="factories_Copy2" suffix="1"> <scons_output_command>scons -Q</scons_output_command> </scons_output> <para> The usefulness of the &Copy; factory becomes more apparent when you use it in a list of actions passed to the &Command; builder. For example, suppose you needed to run a file through a utility that only modifies files in-place, and can't "pipe" input to output. One solution is to copy the source file to a temporary file name, run the utility, and then copy the modified temporary file to the target, which the &Copy; factory makes extremely easy: </para> <scons_example name="factories_Copy3"> <file name="S" printme="1"> Command("file.out", "file.in", [ Copy("tempfile", "$SOURCE"), "modify tempfile", Copy("$TARGET", "tempfile"), ]) </file> <file name="SConstruct"> env = DefaultEnvironment() import os env['ENV']['PATH'] = env['ENV']['PATH'] + os.pathsep + os.getcwd() SConscript('S') </file> <file name="file.in">file.in</file> <file name="modify" chmod="0755"> touch $* </file> </scons_example> <para> The output then looks like: </para> <scons_output example="factories_Copy3" suffix="1"> <scons_output_command>scons -Q</scons_output_command> </scons_output> <para> The &Copy; factory has a third optional argument which controls how symlinks are copied. </para> <para> </para> <scons_example name="factories_SymlinkCopy"> <file name ="SymlinkCopy" printme="1"> # Symbolic link shallow copied as a new symbolic link: Command("LinkIn", "LinkOut", Copy("$TARGET", "$SOURCE"[, True])) # Symbolic link target copied as a file or directory: Command("LinkIn", "FileOrDirectoryOut", Copy("$TARGET", "$SOURCE", False)) </file> </scons_example> </section> <section> <title>Deleting Files or Directories: The &Delete; Factory</title> <para> If you need to delete a file, then the &Delete; factory can be used in much the same way as the &Copy; factory. For example, if we want to make sure that the temporary file in our last example doesn't exist before we copy to it, we could add &Delete; to the beginning of the command list: </para> <scons_example name="factories_Delete1"> <file name="S" printme="1"> Command("file.out", "file.in", [ Delete("tempfile"), Copy("tempfile", "$SOURCE"), "modify tempfile", Copy("$TARGET", "tempfile"), ]) </file> <file name="SConstruct"> env = DefaultEnvironment() import os env['ENV']['PATH'] = env['ENV']['PATH'] + os.pathsep + os.getcwd() SConscript('S') </file> <file name="file.in">file.in</file> <file name="modify" chmod="0755"> touch $* </file> </scons_example> <para> Which then executes as follows: </para> <scons_output example="factories_Delete1" suffix="1"> <scons_output_command>scons -Q</scons_output_command> </scons_output> <para> Of course, like all of these &Action; factories, the &Delete; factory also expands &cv-link-TARGET; and &cv-link-SOURCE; variables appropriately. For example: </para> <scons_example name="factories_Delete2"> <file name="SConstruct" printme="1"> Command("file.out", "file.in", [ Delete("$TARGET"), Copy("$TARGET", "$SOURCE") ]) </file> <file name="file.in">file.in</file> </scons_example> <para> Executes as: </para> <scons_output example="factories_Delete2" suffix="1"> <scons_output_command>scons -Q</scons_output_command> </scons_output> <para> Note, however, that you typically don't need to call the &Delete; factory explicitly in this way; by default, &SCons; deletes its target(s) for you before executing any action. </para> <para> One word of caution about using the &Delete; factory: it has the same variable expansions available as any other factory, including the &cv-SOURCE; variable. Specifying <literal>Delete("$SOURCE")</literal> is not something you usually want to do! </para> </section> <section> <title>Moving (Renaming) Files or Directories: The &Move; Factory</title> <para> The &Move; factory allows you to rename a file or directory. For example, if we don't want to copy the temporary file, we could use: </para> <scons_example name="factories_Move"> <file name="S" printme="1"> Command("file.out", "file.in", [ Copy("tempfile", "$SOURCE"), "modify tempfile", Move("$TARGET", "tempfile"), ]) </file> <file name="SConstruct"> env = DefaultEnvironment() import os env['ENV']['PATH'] = env['ENV']['PATH'] + os.pathsep + os.getcwd() SConscript('S') </file> <file name="file.in">file.in</file> <file name="modify" chmod="0755"> touch $* </file> </scons_example> <para> Which would execute as: </para> <scons_output example="factories_Move" suffix="1"> <scons_output_command>scons -Q</scons_output_command> </scons_output> </section> <section> <title>Updating the Modification Time of a File: The &Touch; Factory</title> <para> If you just need to update the recorded modification time for a file, use the &Touch; factory: </para> <scons_example name="factories_Touch"> <file name="S" printme="1"> Command("file.out", "file.in", [ Copy("$TARGET", "$SOURCE"), Touch("$TARGET"), ]) </file> <file name="SConstruct"> env = DefaultEnvironment() import os env['ENV']['PATH'] = env['ENV']['PATH'] + os.pathsep + os.getcwd() SConscript('S') </file> <file name="file.in">file.in</file> </scons_example> <para> Which executes as: </para> <scons_output example="factories_Touch" suffix="1"> <scons_output_command>scons -Q</scons_output_command> </scons_output> </section> <section> <title>Creating a Directory: The &Mkdir; Factory</title> <para> If you need to create a directory, use the &Mkdir; factory. For example, if we need to process a file in a temporary directory in which the processing tool will create other files that we don't care about, you could use: </para> <scons_example name="factories_Mkdir"> <file name="S" printme="1"> Command("file.out", "file.in", [ Delete("tempdir"), Mkdir("tempdir"), Copy("tempdir/${SOURCE.file}", "$SOURCE"), "process tempdir", Move("$TARGET", "tempdir/output_file"), Delete("tempdir"), ]) </file> <file name="SConstruct"> env = DefaultEnvironment() import os env['ENV']['PATH'] = env['ENV']['PATH'] + os.pathsep + os.getcwd() SConscript('S') </file> <file name="file.in">file.in</file> <file name="process" chmod="0755"> touch $* </file> </scons_example> <para> Which executes as: </para> <scons_output example="factories_Mkdir" suffix="1"> <scons_output_command>scons -Q</scons_output_command> </scons_output> </section> <section> <title>Changing File or Directory Permissions: The &Chmod; Factory</title> <para> To change permissions on a file or directory, use the &Chmod; factory. The permission argument uses POSIX-style permission bits and should typically be expressed as an octal, not decimal, number: </para> <scons_example name="factories_Chmod"> <file name="SConstruct" printme="1"> Command("file.out", "file.in", [ Copy("$TARGET", "$SOURCE"), Chmod("$TARGET", 0755), ]) </file> <file name="file.in">file.in</file> </scons_example> <para> Which executes: </para> <scons_output example="factories_Chmod" suffix="1"> <scons_output_command>scons -Q</scons_output_command> </scons_output> </section> <section> <title>Executing an action immediately: the &Execute; Function</title> <para> We've been showing you how to use &Action; factories in the &Command; function. You can also execute an &Action; returned by a factory (or actually, any &Action;) at the time the &SConscript; file is read by using the &Execute; function. For example, if we need to make sure that a directory exists before we build any targets, </para> <scons_example name="factories_Execute"> <file name="SConstruct" printme="1"> Execute(Mkdir('__ROOT__/tmp/my_temp_directory')) </file> </scons_example> <para> Notice that this will create the directory while the &SConscript; file is being read: </para> <scons_output example="factories_Execute" suffix="1"> <scons_output_command>scons</scons_output_command> </scons_output> <para> If you're familiar with Python, you may wonder why you would want to use this instead of just calling the native Python <function>os.mkdir()</function> function. The advantage here is that the &Mkdir; action will behave appropriately if the user specifies the &SCons; <option>-n</option> or <option>-q</option> options--that is, it will print the action but not actually make the directory when <option>-n</option> is specified, or make the directory but not print the action when <option>-q</option> is specified. </para> <para> The &Execute; function returns the exit status or return value of the underlying action being executed. It will also print an error message if the action fails and returns a non-zero value. &SCons; will <emphasis>not</emphasis>, however, actually stop the build if the action fails. If you want the build to stop in response to a failure in an action called by &Execute;, you must do so by explicitly checking the return value and calling the &Exit; function (or a Python equivalent): </para> <sconstruct> if Execute(Mkdir('__ROOT__/tmp/my_temp_directory')): # A problem occurred while making the temp directory. Exit(1) </sconstruct> </section> </chapter>