<!-- __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; has integrated support for multi-platform build configuration similar to that offered by GNU &Autoconf;, such as figuring out what libraries or header files are available on the local system. This section describes how to use this &SCons feature. </para> <note> <para> This chapter is still under development, so not everything is explained as well as it should be. See the &SCons; man page for additional information. </para> </note> <section> <title>&Configure_Contexts;</title> <para> The basic framework for multi-platform build configuration in &SCons; is to attach a &configure_context; to a construction environment by calling the &Configure; function, perform a number of checks for libraries, functions, header files, etc., and to then call the configure context's &Finish; method to finish off the configuration: </para> <sconstruct> env = Environment() conf = Configure(env) # Checks for libraries, header files, etc. go here! env = conf.Finish() </sconstruct> <para> &SCons; provides a number of basic checks, as well as a mechanism for adding your own custom checks. </para> <para> Note that &SCons; uses its own dependency mechanism to determine when a check needs to be run--that is, &SCons; does not run the checks every time it is invoked, but caches the values returned by previous checks and uses the cached values unless something has changed. This saves a tremendous amount of developer time while working on cross-platform build issues. </para> <para> The next sections describe the basic checks that &SCons; supports, as well as how to add your own custom checks. </para> </section> <section> <title>Checking for the Existence of Header Files</title> <para> Testing the existence of a header file requires knowing what language the header file is. A configure context has a &CheckCHeader; method that checks for the existence of a C header file: </para> <sconstruct> env = Environment() conf = Configure(env) if not conf.CheckCHeader('math.h'): print 'Math.h must be installed!' Exit(1) if conf.CheckCHeader('foo.h'): conf.env.Append('-DHAS_FOO_H') env = conf.Finish() </sconstruct> <para> Note that you can choose to terminate the build if a given header file doesn't exist, or you can modify the contstruction environment based on the existence of a header file. </para> <para> If you need to check for the existence a C++ header file, use the &CheckCXXHeader; method: </para> <sconstruct> env = Environment() conf = Configure(env) if not conf.CheckCXXHeader('vector.h'): print 'vector.h must be installed!' Exit(1) env = conf.Finish() </sconstruct> </section> <section> <title>Checking for the Availability of a Function</title> <para> Check for the availability of a specific function using the &CheckFunc; method: </para> <sconstruct> env = Environment() conf = Configure(env) if not conf.CheckFunc('strcpy'): print 'Did not find strcpy(), using local version' conf.env.Append('-Dstrcpy=my_local_strcpy') env = conf.Finish() </sconstruct> </section> <section> <title>Checking for the Availability of a Library</title> <para> Check for the availability of a library using the &CheckLib; method. You only specify the basename of the library, you don't need to add a <literal>lib</literal> prefix or a <literal>.a</literal> or <literal>.lib</literal> suffix: </para> <sconstruct> env = Environment() conf = Configure(env) if not conf.CheckLib('m'): print 'Did not find libm.a or m.lib, exiting!' Exit(1) env = conf.Finish() </sconstruct> <para> Because the ability to use a library successfully often depends on having access to a header file that describes the library's interface, you can check for a library <emphasis>and</emphasis> a header file at the same time by using the &CheckLibWithHeader; method: </para> <sconstruct> env = Environment() conf = Configure(env) if not conf.CheckLibWithHeader('m', 'math.h'): print 'Did not find libm.a or m.lib, exiting!' Exit(1) env = conf.Finish() </sconstruct> <para> This is essentially shorthand for separate calls to the &CheckHeader; and &CheckLib; functions. </para> </section> <section> <title>Checking for the Availability of a &typedef;</title> <para> Check for the availability of a &typedef; by using the &CheckType; method: </para> <sconstruct> env = Environment() conf = Configure(env) if not conf.CheckType('off_t'): print 'Did not find off_t typedef, assuming int' conf.env.Append(CCFLAGS = '-Doff_t=int') env = conf.Finish() </sconstruct> <para> You can also add a string that will be placed at the beginning of the test file that will be used to check for the &typedef;. This provide a way to specify files that must be included to find the &typedef;: </para> <sconstruct> env = Environment() conf = Configure(env) if not conf.CheckType('off_t', '#include &lt;sys/types.h&gt;\n'): print 'Did not find off_t typedef, assuming int' conf.env.Append(CCFLAGS = '-Doff_t=int') env = conf.Finish() </sconstruct> </section> <section> <title>Adding Your Own Custom Checks</title> <para> A custom check is a Python function that checks for a certain condition to exist on the running system, usually using methods that &SCons; supplies to take care of the details of checking whether a compilation succeeds, a link succeeds, a program is runnable, etc. A simple custom check for the existence of a specific library might look as follows: </para> <sconstruct> mylib_test_source_file = """ #include &lt;mylib.h&gt; int main(int argc, char **argv) { MyLibrary mylib(argc, argv); return 0; } """ def CheckMyLibrary(context): context.Message('Checking for MyLibrary...') result = context.TryLink(mylib_test_source_file, '.c') context.Result(result) return result </sconstruct> <para> The &Message; and &Result; methods should typically begin and end a custom check to let the user know what's going on: the &Message; call prints the specified message (with no trailing newline) and the &Result; call prints <literal>ok</literal> if the check succeeds and <literal>failed</literal> if it doesn't. The &TryLink; method actually tests for whether the specified program text will successfully link. </para> <para> (Note that a custom check can modify its check based on any arguments you choose to pass it, or by using or modifying the configure context environment in the <literal>context.env</literal> attribute.) </para> <para> This custom check function is then attached to the &configure_context; by passing a dictionary to the &Configure; call that maps a name of the check to the underlying function: </para> <sconstruct> env = Environment() conf = Configure(env, custom_tests = {'CheckMyLibrary' : CheckMyLibrary}) </sconstruct> <para> You'll typically want to make the check and the function name the same, as we've done here, to avoid potential confusion. </para> <para> We can then put these pieces together and actually call the <literal>CheckMyLibrary</literal> check as follows: </para> <sconstruct> mylib_test_source_file = """ #include &lt;mylib.h&gt; int main(int argc, char **argv) { MyLibrary mylib(argc, argv); return 0; } """ def CheckMyLibrary(context): context.Message('Checking for MyLibrary... ') result = context.TryLink(mylib_test_source_file, '.c') context.Result(result) return result env = Environment() conf = Configure(env, custom_tests = {'CheckMyLibrary' : CheckMyLibrary}) if not conf.CheckMyLibrary(): print 'MyLibrary is not installed!' Exit(1) env = conf.Finish() # We would then add actual calls like Program() to build # something using the "env" construction environment. </sconstruct> <para> If MyLibrary is not installed on the system, the output will look like: </para> <screen> % <userinput>scons</userinput> scons: Reading SConscript file ... Checking for MyLibrary... failed MyLibrary is not installed! </screen> <para> If MyLibrary is installed, the output will look like: </para> <screen> % <userinput>scons</userinput> scons: Reading SConscript file ... Checking for MyLibrary... failed scons: done reading SConscript scons: Building targets ... . . . </screen> </section> <section> <title>Not Configuring When Cleaning Targets</title> <para> Using multi-platform configuration as described in the previous sections will run the configuration commands even when invoking <userinput>scons -c</userinput> to clean targets: </para> <screen> % <userinput>scons -Q -c</userinput> Checking for MyLibrary... ok Removed foo.o Removed foo </screen> <para> Although running the platform checks when removing targets doesn't hurt anything, it's usually unnecessary. You can avoid this by using the &GetOption(); method to check whether the <option>-c</option> (clean) option has been invoked on the command line: </para> <sconstruct> env = Environment() if not env.GetOption('clean'): conf = Configure(env, custom_tests = {'CheckMyLibrary' : CheckMyLibrary}) if not conf.CheckMyLibrary(): print 'MyLibrary is not installed!' Exit(1) env = conf.Finish() </sconstruct> <screen> % <userinput>scons -Q -c</userinput> Removed foo.o Removed foo </screen> </section>