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<?xml version='1.0'?>
<!DOCTYPE sconsdoc [
    <!ENTITY % scons SYSTEM "../scons.mod">
    %scons;
]>

<chapter id="chap-issues"
         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/scons.xsd scons.xsd">
<title>Other Issues</title>

<!--

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  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.

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  KIND, EXPRESS OR IMPLIED, INCLUDING BUT NOT LIMITED TO THE
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  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>

   No build tools is perfect.
   Here are some &SCons; issues that
   do not yet have solutions.

 </para>

 <section>
 <title>Interaction with SC-config</title>

   <para>

   The SC-config tool will be used in the &SCons; installation
   process to generate an appropriate default construction environment
   so that building most software works "out of the box" on the
   installed platform.  The SC-config tool will find reasonable default
   compilers (C, C++, Fortran), linkers/loaders, library archive tools,
   etc. for specification in the default &SCons; construction
   environment.

   </para>

 </section>

 <section>
 <title>Interaction with test infrastructures</title>

   <para>

   &SCons; can be configured to use SC-test (or some other test tool)
   to provide controlled, automated testing of software.  The &Link;
   method could link a <filename>test</filename> subdirectory to a build
   subdirectory:

   </para>

    <programlisting>
	Link('test', 'build')
	SConscript('test/SConscript')</programlisting>

   <para>

   Any test cases checked in with the source code will be linked
   into the <filename>test</filename> subdirectory and executed.  If
   &SConscript; files and test cases are written with this in mind, then
   invoking:

   </para>

    <programlisting>
	% sccons test</programlisting>

   <para>

   Would run all the automated test cases that depend on any changed
   software.

   </para>


   <!--

	 YYY	integrate with SC-test to provide sanity check on new tools
		"discovery testing" of new tools
		results recorded in a central database
		central database can be somewhere else on web

   -->

 </section>

 <section>
 <title>Java dependencies</title>

   <para>

   Java dependencies are difficult for an external dependency-based
   construction tool to accomodate.  Determining Java class dependencies
   is more complicated than the simple pattern-matching of C or C++
   <literal>#include</literal> files.  From the point of view of an
   external build tool, the Java compiler behaves "unpredictably"
   because it may create or update multiple output class files and
   directories as a result of its internal class dependencies.

   </para>

   <para>

   An obvious &SCons; implementation would be to have the &Scanner;
   object parse output from <command>Java -depend -verbose</command> to
   calculate dependencies, but this has the distinct disadvantage of
   requiring two separate compiler invocations, thereby slowing down
   builds.

   </para>

 </section>

 <section>
 <title>Limitations of digital signature calculation</title>

   <para>

   In practice, calculating digital signatures of a file's contents is a
   more robust mechanism than time stamps for determining what needs
   building.  However:

   </para>

   <orderedlist numeration="arabic">

    <listitem>
    <para>

     Developers used to the time stamp model of &Make; can initially
     find digital signatures counter-intuitive.  The assumption that:

     <programlisting>
	% touch file.c</programlisting>

     will cause a rebuild of <filename>file</filename> is strong...

    </para>
    </listitem>

    <listitem>
    <para>

     Abstracting dependency calculation into a single digital signature
     loses a little information:  It is no longer possible to tell
     (without laborious additional calculation) which input file dependency
     caused a rebuild of a given target file.  A feature that could
     report, "I'm rebuilding file X because it's out-of-date with respect
     to file Y," would be good, but an digital-signature implementation of
     such a feature is non-obvious.

    </para>
    </listitem>

   </orderedlist>

 </section>

 <section>
 <title>Remote execution</title>

   <para>

   The ability to use multiple build systems through remote execution
   of tools would be good.  This should be implementable through the
   &Job; class.  Construction environments would need modification
   to specify build systems.

   </para>

 </section>

 <section>
 <title>Conditional builds</title>

   <para>

   The ability to check run-time conditions as suggested on the
   sc-discuss mailing list ("build X only if: the machine is idle /
   the file system has Y megabytes free space") would also be good,
   but is not part of the current design.

   </para>

 </section>

</chapter>