[Scons-users] Library configuration

[Managan, Rob]

Evan,

I like the idea. I was annoyed at how much work I had to do to build up
the ability to even specify a path on the command line for the build to
check and use. If you want any of what I set up for my use, if only to
say, "I don't want to do it that way!" let me know.

If you do this I encourage you to have an option like mine that says here
is a path to a library and expect headers in path/include and library in
path/lib since so many packages are set up that way. It lessens the user
input. Of course, for some libraries you need to be able to specify
include and lib directories separately.

The autoconf like parts of Scons have been in need of work for many years
to improve them.

I am not sure if it fits with what you are thinking of but I have enjoyed
the ability to cache values from a previous run so I don't have to specify
the directories every time. OTOH, sometimes you forget what it is using. I
suppose I should print out those directories so I can see if they point
somewhere odd.

Rob



On 6/20/12 9:45 AM, "Evan Driscoll" <driscoll at cs.wisc.edu> wrote:


>On 06/20/2012 12:51 AM, Brady Johnson wrote:

>> Additionally, SCons has

>> integrated support for functionality similar to autoconf, as can be

>> found here: 

>>http://www.scons.org/doc/production/HTML/scons-user/c4132.html

>

>Unfortunately, having read over that chapter of the user's guide, the

>corresponding section of the man page, and some wiki pages, I don't

>think that provides the functionality that I'm looking for. It lets you

>test for the presence of a library, but unless I'm missing something, it

>doesn't help with finding it in the first place.

>

>(This means that in the case where the library is required for a build,

>it seems like the principle thing it accomplishes is to give a nice

>"you're missing libthingy" error instead of having the compiler emit a

>"you're missing thingy.h, oh and by the way, here are 200 other error

>messages." Does this sound like a fair characterization?)

>

>

>Part of the reason I'm asking is because I'm contemplating trying to

>write some standard support for this, because it feels like I keep

>writing the same thing over and over again. (My Boost example is only

>contrived in the way that it fails. :-))

>

>What I'm thinking is changing 'conf.CheckLibrary('boost')' (or adding a

>new function) so that it will automagically check command line flags for

>with-boost-incdir/with-boost-libdir or something similar, and adding

>those to LIBPATH/CPPPATH if present. And I'm trying to feel out the

>waters to find out what people are doing right now. The benefit would be

>that (1) it would be a lot easier for someone writing an SConscript to

>offer this functionality, as opposed to now where it's easy to be lazy

>and make it so you have to edit the SConscripts if you have things in

>weird paths and (2) it would hopefully give some uniformity in how those

>features are accessed.

>

>And while I'm at it, I might as well ask now: does this feature sound

>(a) awesome, (b) meh, (c) stupid?

>




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Rob Managan                             email managan at llnl.gov
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