Scons command/explicit dependency - scons

I have a code snippet similar to this:
# Compile protobuf headers
env.Protoc(...)
# Move headers to 'include' (compiled via protobuf)
env.Command([include headers...], [headers...], move_func)
# Compile program (depends on 'include' files)
out2 = SConscript('src/SConscript')
Depends(out2, [include headers...])
Basically, I have Protoc() compiling protobuf files, then the headers are moved to the 'include' directory by env.Command() and finally the program is compiled through a SConscript file in the 'src'.
Since these are header files that are being moved (that the src compilation depends on), they are not explicitly defined as a dependency by scons (as far as I understand). Thus, the compilation runs, but the header files haven't been moved so it fails. I have tried exposing the dependency via Depends() and Requires() without success.
I understand that in the usual case, scons should "figure-out" dependencies, but I don't know how it could do that here.
Thanks!

You seem to be thinking in "make" ways about your build process, which is the wrong approach when using SCons. You can't order single build steps by putting them in different SConscripts, and then including those in a special order. You have to define proper dependencies between your actual sources (C/CPP files for example) and a target like a program or PDF file. Then SCons is able to figure out the correct build order, and will traverse through the folder structure of your project automatically. If required, it will enter subfolders more than once when the dependency graph (DAG) dictates this. Defining this kind of dependencies between inputs and outputs is usually done, using a Builder...and in your case the Install() builder would be a good fit. Please also regard the hints for #2 in the list of "most frequently-asked FAQs" ( https://bitbucket.org/scons/scons/wiki/FrequentlyAskedQuestions).
Further, I can only recommend to read a little more in the UserGuide ( http://www.scons.org/doc/production/HTML/scons-user.html ) to get a better feeling for how to do things in a more "SConsy" way. If you get stuck, feel free to ask further questions on our mailing list at scons-users#scons.org (see http://www.scons.org/lists.php ).
Finally, if you have a lot of steps that you want to execute in serial, and that don't require any special input/output files, SCons is probably not the right tool for your current task. It's designed as a file-oriented build system with automatic parallelization in mind, a simple (Python?) script might be better at the mere serial stuff...

Related

find_dependency(Threads) or include(FindThreads) in a package config file

In CMake, we can use find_dependency() in an package -config.cmake file to "forwards the correct parameters for QUIET and REQUIRED which were passed to the original find_package() call." So, naturally we'll want to do that instead of calling find_package() in such files.
Also, for dependency on a threads library, CMake offers us the FindThreads module, so that we write include(FindThreads), prepended by some preference commands, and get a bunch of interesting variables set. So, that's preferable to find_package(Threads).
And thus we have a dilemma: What to put in -config.cmake files, for a threads library dependency? The former, or the latter?
Following a discussion in comments with #Tsyarev, it seems that:
find_package(Threads) includes the FindThreads module internally.
... which means it "respects" the preference variables affecting FindThreads behavioe.
so it makes sense, functionally and aesthetically, to just use find_package() in your main CMakeLists.txt and find_dependency() in -config.cmake.

Why Is Doppl Trying To Pull in ReactiveStreams?

I am attempting to convert parts of an Android app to iOS using Doppl, and I am getting a strange result: Doppl keeps trying to pull in android.arch.lifecycle:reactivestreams, even though I don't want it to.
Specifically, in app/build/j2objcSrcGenMain/android/arch/lifecycle/, there is a reactivestrams/ subdirectory with R.h and R.m files in it. This seems to make Xcode cranky and may explain why I had some oddities with pod install.
My app/build.gradle has compile "android.arch.lifecycle:reactivestreams:$archVer", because my activity is using LiveDataReactiveStreams.fromPublisher(). However:
The activity is not in the translatePattern (and since its code is not showing up in app/build/j2objcSrcGenMain/, I have to assume that the translatePattern is fine)
I do not have a doppl statement related to reactivestreams, because there does not appear to be a Doppl conversion of this library (nor should it be needed here)
AFAIK, nowhere else in this app am I referring to LiveDataReactiveStreams, which AFAIK is the one-and-only public class from the reactivestreams library
So, the questions:
What determines whether Doppl creates R.h and R.m files for some dependency? It's not the existence of a doppl statement, as I have doppl statements for a lot of other dependencies (RxJava, RxAndroid, Retrofit) and those do not get R.h and R.m files. It's not whether the dependency is referenced from generated code, as my repository definitely uses RxJava and Retrofit, yet there are no R files for those.
How can I figure out why Doppl generates R.h and R.m for reactivestreams?
Once I get this cleared up... do I re-run pod install, or is there some other pod command to refresh an existing pod with a new implementation?
Look into 'app/build/generated/source/r/debug' and confirm there's an R.java being created for the architecture component. It'll be under 'android/arch/lifecycle/reactivestrams'.
I think there are 2 problems here.
Problem 1
Somehow Doppl/J2objc is of the opinion that this file should be transpiled. It could be either that 'translatePattern' matches with it, or that something in the shared code is referencing it. If you can't figure out which, please post a comment and I'll try to help (or post in slack group).
Problem 2
Regardless of why that 'R.java' is being sucked into the translate step, because of how stock J2objc is configured, the code is being generated with package folders instead of creating One Big Name. That generated file should be called 'AndroidArchLifecycleReactivestramsR.h' (and AndroidArchLifecycleReactivestramsR.m). Xcode really doesn't like package folders. That's why there's a slightly custom J2ojbc being used with Doppl, so we can have files with big names instead of folders.
In cases where you intentionally use package names that match with what J2objc considers to be "system" classes, you need to provide a header mapping file to force long names. The 'androidbase' doppl library needs to add a lot of files that are in the 'android' package, which J2objc considers "system". We override those names in the mapping file.
build.gradle
https://github.com/doppllib/core-doppl/blob/master/androidbase/build.gradle#L19
mapping file
https://github.com/doppllib/core-doppl/blob/master/androidbase/src/main/java/androidbase.mappings
I screwed up.
In my dopplConfig, I have:
translatePattern {
include '**/api/**'
include '**/arch/**'
include '**/RepositoryTest.java'
}
In this case, **/arch/** not only matches my arch package, but also the arch package from the Architecture Components.
Ordinarily, this would not matter, because the Architecture Components source code is not in my project. But, R.java gets generated, due to resources, and the translatePattern includes generated source code in addition to lovingly hand-crafted source code. So, that's where my extraneous Objective-C was coming from.
Many thanks to Kevin Galligan for his assistance with this, out on the #newbiehelp Doppl Slack channel!

SCons: how to explicitly express the dependencies between envs?

I have a project build by scons.
In the project there are multiple components, including client, shell, engine and etc...
Each component uses different compile options so they are split into different env.
And both shell and engine are going to require client libraries built first.
In the environment settings, both shell and engine has something like "-lclient -L[installpath]/lib", and SConscriptClient is going to build the libclient.a in [installpath]/lib.
So I expect SConscriptClient is run before everything else.
so in the code I have something like:
clientbuild = clientEnv.SConscript ( 'SConscriptClient', variant_dir=clientDir )
if hasShell:
shellbuild = shellEnv.SConscript ( 'SConscriptShell', variant_dir=shellDir )
Depends ( shellbuild, clientbuild )
if hasEngine:
enginebuild = engineEnv.SConscript ( 'SConscriptEngine', variant_dir=engineDir )
Depends ( enginebuild, clientbuild )
However it seems scons is not smart enough to understand the dependencies between client/shell and engine ( that means the Depends call doesn't take effect ). It still try to run SConscriptShell before SConscriptClient
Is there anything i can do to set the dependeices between sconscript?
You shouldn't have to explicitly set these dependencies with Depends(). If the client library is a target built by SCons and both the shell and engine link that library, then SCons should be able to implicitly determine the dependencies and build the client first.
Basically, I see 2 issues here:
Why doesn't SCons implicitly figure out the dependencies?
Why isn't it working as is with the explicit calls to Depends()?
If we figure out number 1, then we wont have to figure out number 2. But just to be complete, I think number 2 isnt working because of what the call to SConscript() is returning. In the subsidiary SConscript scripts (SConscriptClient, SConscriptShell, and SConscriptEngine) are you returning the target? If not, I would imagine the clientbuild variable would be None. To return the target use the Return() SCons function and pass it the return value of the Library() builder.
As for why SCons cant figure out the dependencies implicitly, we would need to see the subsidiary SConscript build scripts. But I can imagine its because you are probably specifying the client library "by hand", so SCons doesnt see the dependency.
The way to build a program with a library so that SCons can see the dependency, you need to use the LIBS construction variable, as follows:
env.Append(LIBS='client')
env.Append(LIBPATH='path/to/client/lib')
env.Program(target='shell', source='shell.cc')
Notice I don't use the -l nor the -L flags above, SCons will add those in a platform independent manner. If you're specifying the library "by hand" by specifying it like this: '-lclient' then SCons wont see the dependency. This is by design, and is more interesting with include paths: if you have a lot of include paths with header files that will almost never change, then (for performance reasons) you don't want SCons to scan them for changes, and thus specify them "by hand".
One additional comment, normally the different environments are passed to the subsidiary SConscript build scripts differently, as follows:
clientEnv = Environment()
# set the clientEnv accordingly
SConscript ('SConscriptClient', variant_dir=clientDir, exports=['clientEnv'] )
SConscriptClient:
Import('clientEnv')
# You may want to clone the clientEnv here, if you want to make
# changes that you don't want seen in the rest of the build

How to prevent scons from cleaning parent and sibling directories?

I'm working on implementing a build system using scons for a somewhat large software project. There is a directory structure which separates the code for individual libraries and programs into their own directories. With our existing make system, I can do a "make clean" in a single program directory and it will only clean the files associated with the source in that directory. If I do an "scons -c" though, it recognizes that the program depends on a slew of libraries that are in sibling (or cousin) directories and cleans all of the files for those as well. This is not what I want since I then have to rebuild all of these libraries which can take several minutes.
I have tried playing with the "NoClean()" command, but have not gotten it to work in the way I need. Given the size of the code base and complexity of the directory structure, I can't realistically have a NoClean() line for every file in every library.
Is there any way to tell scons to ignore any dependencies above the current directory when doing a clean (i.e. scons -c) ?
I'd love to have a good answer to this myself.
The only solution that I can offer for now is that you get Noclean working.
So in your library, you should have something like this
lib_objs = SharedObject(source_list)
mylib = SharedLibrary('libname', lib_objs)
So for this we want to protect the library and the sources from being cleaned.
NoClean([mylib, lib_objs])
Notice that I had to split the building of the object files from the library because I want to be able to pass them to NoClean as well.
Try using the target name when cleaning.
scons -c aTargetName
You can use the SCons Alias() function to simplify the target name and to also group several target names into one alias.
With this approach you'll have to add an alias in each appropriate subdir, which isn't necessarily a bad thing :)

On GNU/Linux systems, Where should I load application data from?

In this instance I'm using c with autoconf, but the question applies elsewhere.
I have a glade xml file that is needed at runtime, and I have to tell the application where it is. I'm using autoconf to define a variable in my code that points to the "specified prefix directory"/app-name/glade. But that only begins to work once the application is installed. What if I want to run the program before that point? Is there a standard way to determine what paths should be checked for application data?
Thanks
Thanks for the responses. To clarify, I don't need to know where the app data is installed (eg by searching in /usr,usr/local,etc etc), the configure script does that. The problem was more determining whether the app has been installed yet. I guess I'll just check in install location first, and if not then in "./src/foo.glade".
I dont think there's any standard way on how to locate such data.
I'd personally do it in a way that i'd have a list of paths and i'd locate if i can find the file from anyone of those and the list should containt the DATADIR+APPNAME defined from autoconf and CURRENTDIRECTORY+POSSIBLE_PREFIX where prefix might be some folder from your build root.
But in any case, dont forget to use those defines from autoconf for your data files, those make your software easier to package (like deb/rpm)
There is no prescription how this should be done in general, but Debian packagers usually installs the application data somewhere in /usr/share, /usr/lib, et cetera. They may also patch the software to make it read from appropriate locations. You can see the Debian policy for more information.
I can however say a few words how I do it. First, I don't expect to find the file in a single directory; I first create a list of directories that I iterate through in my wrapper around fopen(). This is the order in which I believe the file reading should be done:
current directory (obviously)
~/.program-name
$(datadir)/program-name
$(datadir) is a variable you can use in Makefile.am. Example:
AM_CPPFLAGS = $(ASSERT_FLAGS) $(DEBUG_FLAGS) $(SDLGFX_FLAGS) $(OPENGL_FLAGS) -DDESTDIRS=\"$(prefix):$(datadir)/:$(datadir)/program-name/\"
This of course depends on your output from configure and how your configure.ac looks like.
So, just make a wrapper that will iterate through the locations and get the data from those dirs. Something like a PATH variable, except you implement the iteration.
After writing this post, I noticed I need to clean up our implementation in this project, but it can serve as a nice start. Take a look at our Makefile.am for using $(datadir) and our util.cpp and util.h for a simple wrapper (yatc_fopen()). We also have yatc_find_file() in case some third-party library is doing the fopen()ing, such as SDL_image or libxml2.
If the program is installed globally:
/usr/share/app-name/glade.xml
If you want the program to work without being installed (i.e. just extract a tarball), put it in the program's directory.
I don't think there is a standard way of placing files. I build it into the program, and I don't limit it to one location.
It depends on how much customising of the config file is going to be required.
I start by constructing a list of default directories and work through them until I find an instance of glade.xml and stop looking, or not find it and exit with an error. Good candidates for the default list are /etc, /usr/share/app-name, /usr/local/etc.
If the file is designed to be customizable, before I look through the default directories, I have a list of user files and paths and work through them. If it doesn't find one of the user versions, then I look in the list of default directories. Good candidates for the user config files are ~/.glade.xml or ~/.app-name/glade.xml or ~/.app-name/.glade.xml.

Resources