path: root/doc/user/misc.xml

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  <para>

  &SCons; supports a lot of additional functionality
  that doesn't readily fit into the other chapters.

  </para>

  <section>
  <title>Verifying the Python Version:  the &EnsurePythonVersion; Function</title>

    <para>

    Although the &SCons; code itself will run 
    on any Python version 1.5.2 or later,
    you are perfectly free to make use of
    Python syntax and modules from more modern versions
    (for example, Python 2.4 or 2.5)
    when writing your &SConscript; files
    or your own local modules.
    If you do this, it's usually helpful to
    configure &SCons; to exit gracefully with an error message
    if it's being run with a version of Python
    that simply won't work with your code.
    This is especially true if you're going to use &SCons;
    to build source code that you plan to distribute publicly,
    where you can't be sure of the Python version
    that an anonymous remote user might use
    to try to build your software.

    </para>

    <para>

    &SCons; provides an &EnsurePythonVersion; function for this.
    You simply pass it the major and minor versions
    numbers of the version of Python you require:

    </para>

    <!--

    TODO:  Figure out how to generate the error message
    regardless of executing Python version by faking out
    the infrastructure in some way.

    <scons_example name="EnsurePythonVersion">
      <file name="SConstruct" printme="1">
      EnsurePythonVersion(2, 5)
      </file>
    </scons_example>

    -->

    <programlisting>
      EnsurePythonVersion(2, 5)
    </programlisting>

    <para>

    And then &SCons; will exit with the following error
    message when a user runs it with an unsupported
    earlier version of Python:

    </para>

    <!--

    TODO:  Figure out how to generate the error message
    regardless of executing Python version by faking out
    the infrastructure in some way.

    <scons_output example="EnsurePythonVersion">
      <scons_output_command>scons -Q</scons_output_command>
    </scons_output>

    -->

    <screen>
      % <userinput>scons -Q</userinput>
      Python 2.5 or greater required, but you have Python 2.3.6
    </screen>

  </section>

  <section>
  <title>Verifying the SCons Version:  the &EnsureSConsVersion; Function</title>

    <para>

    You may, of course, write your &SConscript; files
    to use features that were only added in
    recent versions of &SCons;.
    When you publicly distribute software that is built using &SCons;,
    it's helpful to have &SCons;
    verify the version being used and
    exit gracefully with an error message
    if the user's version of &SCons; won't work
    with your &SConscript; files.
    &SCons; provides an &EnsureSConsVersion; function
    that verifies the version of &SCons;
    in the same
    the &EnsurePythonVersion; function
    verifies the version of Python,
    by passing in the major and minor versions
    numbers of the version of SCons you require:

    </para>

    <!--

    TODO:  Figure out how to generate the error message
    regardless of executing SCons version by faking out
    the infrastructure in some way.

    <scons_example name="EnsureSConsVersion">
      <file name="SConstruct" printme="1">
      EnsureSConsVersion(1, 0)
      </file>
    </scons_example>

    -->

    <programlisting>
      EnsureSConsVersion(1, 0)
    </programlisting>

    <para>

    And then &SCons; will exit with the following error
    message when a user runs it with an unsupported
    earlier version of &SCons;:

    </para>

    <!--

    TODO:  Figure out how to generate the error message
    regardless of executing SCons version by faking out
    the infrastructure in some way.

    <scons_output example="EnsureSConsVersion">
      <scons_output_command>scons -Q</scons_output_command>
    </scons_output>

    -->

    <screen>
      % <userinput>scons -Q</userinput>
      SCons 1.0 or greater required, but you have SCons 0.98.5
    </screen>

  </section>

  <section>
  <title>Explicitly Terminating &SCons; While Reading &SConscript; Files:  the &Exit; Function</title>

    <para>

    &SCons; supports an &Exit; function
    which can be used to terminate &SCons;
    while reading the &SConscript; files,
    usually because you've detected a condition
    under which it doesn't make sense to proceed:

    </para>

    <programlisting>
      if ARGUMENTS.get('FUTURE'):
          print "The FUTURE option is not supported yet!"
          Exit(2)
      env = Environment()
      env.Program('hello.c')
    </programlisting>

    <screen>
      % <userinput>scons -Q FUTURE=1</userinput>
      The FUTURE option is not supported yet!
      % <userinput>scons -Q</userinput>
      cc -o hello.o -c hello.c
      cc -o hello hello.o
    </screen>

    <para>

    The &Exit; function takes as an argument
    the (numeric) exit status that you want &SCons; to exit with.
    If you don't specify a value,
    the default is to exit with <literal>0</literal>,
    which indicates successful execution.

    </para>

    <para>

    Note that the &Exit; function
    is equivalent to calling the Python
    <function>sys.exit</function> function
    (which the it actually calls),
    but because &Exit; is a &SCons; function,
    you don't have to import the Python
    <literal>sys</literal> module to use it.

    </para>

  </section>

  <section>
  <title>Handling Nested Lists:  the &Flatten; Function</title>

    <para>

    &SCons; supports a &Flatten; function
    which takes an input Python sequence
    (list or tuple)
    and returns a flattened list
    containing just the individual elements of
    the sequence.
    This can be handy when trying to examine
    a list composed of the lists
    returned by calls to various Builders.
    For example, you might collect
    object files built in different ways
    into one call to the &Program; Builder
    by just enclosing them in a list, as follows:

    </para>

    <programlisting>
      objects = [
          Object('prog1.c'),
          Object('prog2.c', CCFLAGS='-DFOO'),
      ]
      Program(objects)
    </programlisting>

    <para>

    Because the Builder calls in &SCons;
    flatten their input lists,
    this works just fine to build the program:

    </para>

    <screen>
      % <userinput>scons -Q</userinput>
      cc -o prog1.o -c prog1.c
      cc -o prog2.o -c -DFOO prog2.c
      cc -o prog1 prog1.o prog2.o
    </screen>

    <para>

    But if you were debugging your build
    and wanted to print the absolute path
    of each object file in the
    <varname>objects</varname> list,
    you might try the following simple approach,
    trying to print each Node's
    <literal>abspath</literal>
    attribute:

    </para>

    <programlisting>
      objects = [
          Object('prog1.c'),
          Object('prog2.c', CCFLAGS='-DFOO'),
      ]
      Program(objects)

      for object_file in objects:
          print object_file.abspath
    </programlisting>

    <para>

    This does not work as expected
    because each call to <function>str</function>
    is operating an embedded list returned by
    each &Object; call,
    not on the underlying Nodes within those lists:

    </para>

    <screen>
      % <userinput>scons -Q</userinput>
      AttributeError: NodeList instance has no attribute 'abspath':
        File "/home/my/project/SConstruct", line 8:
          print object_file.abspath
    </screen>

    <para>

    The solution is to use the &Flatten; function
    so that you can pass each Node to
    the <function>str</function> separately:

    </para>

    <programlisting>
      objects = [
          Object('prog1.c'),
          Object('prog2.c', CCFLAGS='-DFOO'),
      ]
      Program(objects)

      for object_file in Flatten(objects):
          print object_file.abspath
    </programlisting>

    <!--

    TODO:  can't use this now because it displays the temporary path name

    <scons_output example="Flatten3">
      <scons_output_command>scons -Q</scons_output_command>
    </scons_output>

    -->

    <screen>
      % <userinput>scons -Q</userinput>
      /home/me/project/prog1.o
      /home/me/project/prog2.o
      cc -o prog1.o -c prog1.c
      cc -o prog2.o -c -DFOO prog2.c
      cc -o prog1 prog1.o prog2.o
    </screen>

  </section>