Merge commit 'upstream/1.2.0.d20091224'

1 files changed, 175 insertions, 0 deletions

diff --git a/doc/developer/preface.xml b/doc/developer/preface.xml
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..ece9cdc
--- /dev/null
+++ b/doc/developer/preface.xml
@@ -0,0 +1,175 @@
+<!--
+
+  Copyright (c) 2001, 2002, 2003, 2004, 2005, 2006, 2007, 2008, 2009 The SCons Foundation
+
+  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>
+
+  This document assumes that you already know how &SCons;
+  and that you want to learn how to work on the code.
+
+  </para>
+
+  <section>
+  <title>&SCons; Principles</title>
+
+    <para>
+
+    There are a few overriding principles
+    we try to live up to in designing and implementing &SCons:
+
+    </para>
+
+    <variablelist>
+
+      <varlistentry>
+      <term>Correctness</term>
+
+      <listitem>
+      <para>
+
+      First and foremost,
+      by default, &SCons; guarantees a correct build
+      even if it means sacrificing performance a little.
+      We strive to guarantee the build is correct
+      regardless of how the software being built is structured,
+      how it may have been written,
+      or how unusual the tools are that build it.
+
+      </para>
+      </listitem>
+      </varlistentry>
+
+      <varlistentry>
+      <term>Performance</term>
+
+      <listitem>
+      <para>
+
+      Given that the build is correct,
+      we try to make &SCons; build software
+      as quickly as possible.
+      In particular, wherever we may have needed to slow
+      down the default &SCons; behavior to guarantee a correct build,
+      we also try to make it easy to speed up &SCons;
+      through optimization options that let you trade off
+      guaranteed correctness in all end cases for
+      a speedier build in the usual cases.
+
+      </para>
+      </listitem>
+      </varlistentry>
+
+      <varlistentry>
+      <term>Convenience</term>
+
+      <listitem>
+      <para>
+
+      &SCons; tries to do as much for you out of the box as reasonable,
+      including detecting the right tools on your system
+      and using them correctly to build the software.
+
+      </para>
+      </listitem>
+      </varlistentry>
+
+    </variablelist>
+
+    <para>
+
+    In a nutshell, we try hard to make &SCons; just
+    "do the right thing" and build software correctly,
+    with a minimum of hassles.
+
+    </para>
+
+  </section>
+
+  <section>
+  <title>Acknowledgements</title>
+
+    <para>
+
+    &SCons; would not exist without a lot of help
+    from a lot of people,
+    many of whom may not even be aware
+    that they helped or served as inspiration.
+    So in no particular order,
+    and at the risk of leaving out someone:
+
+    </para>
+
+    <para>
+
+    First and foremost,
+    &SCons; owes a tremendous debt to Bob Sidebotham,
+    the original author of the classic Perl-based &Cons; tool
+    which Bob first released to the world back around 1996.
+    Bob's work on Cons classic provided the underlying architecture
+    and model of specifying a build configuration
+    using a real scripting language.
+    My real-world experience working on Cons
+    informed many of the design decisions in SCons,
+    including the improved parallel build support,
+    making Builder objects easily definable by users,
+    and separating the build engine from the wrapping interface.
+
+    </para>
+
+    <para>
+
+    Greg Wilson was instrumental in getting
+    &SCons; started as a real project
+    when he initiated the Software Carpentry design
+    competition in February 2000.
+    Without that nudge,
+    marrying the advantages of the Cons classic
+    architecture with the readability of Python
+    might have just stayed no more than a nice idea.
+
+    </para>
+
+    <para>
+
+    Thanks to Peter Miller
+    for his splendid change management system, &Aegis;,
+    which has provided the &SCons; project
+    with a robust development methodology from day one,
+    and which showed me how you could
+    integrate incremental regression tests into
+    a practical development cycle
+    (years before eXtreme Programming arrived on the scene).
+
+    </para>
+
+    <para>
+
+    And last, thanks to Guido van Rossum
+    for his elegant scripting language,
+    which is the basis not only for the &SCons; implementation,
+    but for the interface itself.
+
+    </para>
+
+  </section>