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-<!--
-
- Copyright (c) 2001, 2002, 2003, 2004, 2005, 2006, 2007, 2008, 2009, 2010, 2011, 2012, 2013 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>
-
- A key aspect of creating a usable build configuration
- is providing good output from the build
- so its users can readily understand
- what the build is doing
- and get information about how to control the build.
- &SCons; provides several ways of
- controlling output from the build configuration
- to help make the build
- more useful and understandable.
-
- </para>
-
- <section>
- <title>Providing Build Help: the &Help; Function</title>
-
- <para>
-
- It's often very useful to be able to give
- users some help that describes the
- specific targets, build options, etc.,
- that can be used for your build.
- &SCons; provides the &Help; function
- to allow you to specify this help text:
-
- </para>
-
- <scons_example name="ex1">
- <file name="SConstruct" printme="1">
- Help("""
- Type: 'scons program' to build the production program,
- 'scons debug' to build the debug version.
- """)
- </file>
- </scons_example>
-
- <para>
-
- (Note the above use of the Python triple-quote syntax,
- which comes in very handy for
- specifying multi-line strings like help text.)
-
- </para>
-
- <para>
-
- When the &SConstruct; or &SConscript; files
- contain such a call to the &Help; function,
- the specified help text will be displayed in response to
- the &SCons; <literal>-h</literal> option:
-
- </para>
-
- <scons_output example="ex1">
- <scons_output_command>scons -h</scons_output_command>
- </scons_output>
-
- <para>
-
- The &SConscript; files may contain
- multiple calls to the &Help; function,
- in which case the specified text(s)
- will be concatenated when displayed.
- This allows you to split up the
- help text across multiple &SConscript; files.
- In this situation, the order in
- which the &SConscript; files are called
- will determine the order in which the &Help; functions are called,
- which will determine the order in which
- the various bits of text will get concatenated.
-
- </para>
-
- <para>
-
- Another use would be to make the help text conditional
- on some variable.
- For example, suppose you only want to display
- a line about building a Windows-only
- version of a program when actually
- run on Windows.
- The following &SConstruct; file:
-
- </para>
-
- <scons_example name="ex2">
- <file name="SConstruct" printme="1">
- env = Environment()
-
- Help("\nType: 'scons program' to build the production program.\n")
-
- if env['PLATFORM'] == 'win32':
- Help("\nType: 'scons windebug' to build the Windows debug version.\n")
- </file>
- </scons_example>
-
- <para>
-
- Will display the complete help text on Windows:
-
- </para>
-
- <scons_output example="ex2" os="win32">
- <scons_output_command>scons -h</scons_output_command>
- </scons_output>
-
- <para>
-
- But only show the relevant option on a Linux or UNIX system:
-
- </para>
-
- <scons_output example="ex2" os="posix">
- <scons_output_command>scons -h</scons_output_command>
- </scons_output>
-
- <para>
-
- If there is no &Help; text in the &SConstruct; or
- &SConscript; files,
- &SCons; will revert to displaying its
- standard list that describes the &SCons; command-line
- options.
- This list is also always displayed whenever
- the <literal>-H</literal> option is used.
-
- </para>
-
- </section>
-
- <section>
- <title>Controlling How &SCons; Prints Build Commands: the <envar>$*COMSTR</envar> Variables</title>
-
- <para>
-
- Sometimes the commands executed
- to compile object files or link programs
- (or build other targets)
- can get very long,
- long enough to make it difficult for users
- to distinguish error messages or
- other important build output
- from the commands themselves.
- All of the default <envar>$*COM</envar> variables
- that specify the command lines
- used to build various types of target files
- have a corresponding <envar>$*COMSTR</envar> variable
- that can be set to an alternative
- string that will be displayed
- when the target is built.
-
- </para>
-
- <para>
-
- For example, suppose you want to
- have &SCons; display a
- <literal>"Compiling"</literal>
- message whenever it's compiling an object file,
- and a
- <literal>"Linking"</literal>
- when it's linking an executable.
- You could write a &SConstruct; file
- that looks like:
-
- </para>
-
- <scons_example name="COMSTR">
- <file name="SConstruct" printme="1">
- env = Environment(CCCOMSTR = "Compiling $TARGET",
- LINKCOMSTR = "Linking $TARGET")
- env.Program('foo.c')
- </file>
- <file name="foo.c">
- foo.c
- </file>
- </scons_example>
-
- <para>
-
- Which would then yield the output:
-
- </para>
-
- <!--
-
- <scons_output example="COMSTR" os="posix">
- <scons_output_command>scons -Q</scons_output_command>
- </scons_output>
-
- -->
-
- <screen>
- % <userinput>scons -Q</userinput>
- Compiling foo.o
- Linking foo
- </screen>
-
- <para>
-
- &SCons; performs complete variable substitution
- on <envar>$*COMSTR</envar> variables,
- so they have access to all of the
- standard variables like &cv-TARGET; &cv-SOURCES;, etc.,
- as well as any construction variables
- that happen to be configured in
- the construction environment
- used to build a specific target.
-
- </para>
-
- <para>
-
- Of course, sometimes it's still important to
- be able to see the exact command
- that &SCons; will execute to build a target.
- For example, you may simply need to verify
- that &SCons; is configured to supply
- the right options to the compiler,
- or a developer may want to
- cut-and-paste a compile command
- to add a few options
- for a custom test.
-
- </para>
-
- <para>
-
- One common way to give users
- control over whether or not
- &SCons; should print the actual command line
- or a short, configured summary
- is to add support for a
- <varname>VERBOSE</varname>
- command-line variable to your &SConstruct; file.
- A simple configuration for this might look like:
-
- </para>
-
- <scons_example name="COMSTR-VERBOSE">
- <file name="SConstruct" printme="1">
- env = Environment()
- if ARGUMENTS.get('VERBOSE') != "1':
- env['CCCOMSTR'] = "Compiling $TARGET"
- env['LINKCOMSTR'] = "Linking $TARGET"
- env.Program('foo.c')
- </file>
- <file name="foo.c">
- foo.c
- </file>
- </scons_example>
-
- <para>
-
-
- By only setting the appropriate
- <envar>$*COMSTR</envar> variables
- if the user specifies
- <literal>VERBOSE=1</literal>
- on the command line,
- the user has control
- over how &SCons;
- displays these particular command lines:
-
- </para>
-
- <!--
-
- <scons_output example="COMSTR-VERBOSE" os="posix">
- <scons_output_command>scons -Q</scons_output_command>
- <scons_output_command>scons -Q -c</scons_output_command>
- <scons_output_command>scons -Q VERBOSE=1</scons_output_command>
- </scons_output>
-
- -->
-
- <screen>
- % <userinput>scons -Q</userinput>
- Compiling foo.o
- Linking foo
- % <userinput>scons -Q -c</userinput>
- Removed foo.o
- Removed foo
- % <userinput>scons -Q VERBOSE=1</userinput>
- cc -o foo.o -c foo.c
- cc -o foo foo.o
- </screen>
-
- </section>
-
- <section>
- <title>Providing Build Progress Output: the &Progress; Function</title>
-
- <para>
-
- Another aspect of providing good build output
- is to give the user feedback
- about what &SCons; is doing
- even when nothing is being built at the moment.
- This can be especially true for large builds
- when most of the targets are already up-to-date.
- Because &SCons; can take a long time
- making absolutely sure that every
- target is, in fact, up-to-date
- with respect to a lot of dependency files,
- it can be easy for users to mistakenly
- conclude that &SCons; is hung
- or that there is some other problem with the build.
-
- </para>
-
- <para>
-
- One way to deal with this perception
- is to configure &SCons; to print something to
- let the user know what it's "thinking about."
- The &Progress; function
- allows you to specify a string
- that will be printed for every file
- that &SCons; is "considering"
- while it is traversing the dependency graph
- to decide what targets are or are not up-to-date.
-
- </para>
-
- <scons_example name="Progress-TARGET">
- <file name="SConstruct" printme="1">
- Progress('Evaluating $TARGET\n')
- Program('f1.c')
- Program('f2.c')
- </file>
- <file name="f1.c">
- f1.c
- </file>
- <file name="f2.c">
- f2.c
- </file>
- </scons_example>
-
- <para>
-
- Note that the &Progress; function does not
- arrange for a newline to be printed automatically
- at the end of the string (as does the Python
- <literal>print</literal> statement),
- and we must specify the
- <literal>\n</literal>
- that we want printed at the end of the configured string.
- This configuration, then,
- will have &SCons;
- print that it is <literal>Evaluating</literal>
- each file that it encounters
- in turn as it traverses the dependency graph:
-
- </para>
-
- <scons_output example="Progress-TARGET" os="posix">
- <scons_output_command>scons -Q</scons_output_command>
- </scons_output>
-
- <para>
-
- Of course, normally you don't want to add
- all of these additional lines to your build output,
- as that can make it difficult for the user
- to find errors or other important messages.
- A more useful way to display
- this progress might be
- to have the file names printed
- directly to the user's screen,
- not to the same standard output
- stream where build output is printed,
- and to use a carriage return character
- (<literal>\r</literal>)
- so that each file name gets re-printed on the same line.
- Such a configuration would look like:
-
- </para>
-
- <sconstruct>
- Progress('$TARGET\r',
- file=open('/dev/tty', 'w'),
- overwrite=True)
- Program('f1.c')
- Program('f2.c')
- </sconstruct>
-
- <para>
-
- Note that we also specified the
- <literal>overwrite=True</literal> argument
- to the &Progress; function,
- which causes &SCons; to
- "wipe out" the previous string with space characters
- before printing the next &Progress; string.
- Without the
- <literal>overwrite=True</literal> argument,
- a shorter file name would not overwrite
- all of the charactes in a longer file name that
- precedes it,
- making it difficult to tell what the
- actual file name is on the output.
- Also note that we opened up the
- <filename>/dev/tty</filename> file
- for direct access (on POSIX) to
- the user's screen.
- On Windows, the equivalent would be to open
- the <filename>con:</filename> file name.
-
- </para>
-
- <para>
-
- Also, it's important to know that although you can use
- <literal>$TARGET</literal> to substitute the name of
- the node in the string,
- the &Progress; function does <emphasis>not</emphasis>
- perform general variable substitution
- (because there's not necessarily a construction
- environment involved in evaluating a node
- like a source file, for example).
-
- </para>
-
- <para>
-
- You can also specify a list of strings
- to the &Progress; function,
- in which case &SCons; will
- display each string in turn.
- This can be used to implement a "spinner"
- by having &SCons; cycle through a
- sequence of strings:
-
- </para>
-
- <sconstruct>
- Progress(['-\r', '\\\r', '|\r', '/\r'], interval=5)
- Program('f1.c')
- Program('f2.c')
- </sconstruct>
-
- <para>
-
- Note that here we have also used the
- <literal>interval=</literal>
- keyword argument to have &SCons;
- only print a new "spinner" string
- once every five evaluated nodes.
- Using an <literal>interval=</literal> count,
- even with strings that use <literal>$TARGET</literal> like
- our examples above,
- can be a good way to lessen the
- work that &SCons; expends printing &Progress; strings,
- while still giving the user feedback
- that indicates &SCons; is still
- working on evaluating the build.
-
- </para>
-
- <para>
-
- Lastly, you can have direct control
- over how to print each evaluated node
- by passing a Python function
- (or other Python callable)
- to the &Progress; function.
- Your function will be called
- for each evaluated node,
- allowing you to
- implement more sophisticated logic
- like adding a counter:
-
- </para>
-
- <scons_example name="Progress-callable">
- <file name="SConstruct" printme="1">
- screen = open('/dev/tty', 'w')
- count = 0
- def progress_function(node)
- count += 1
- screen.write('Node %4d: %s\r' % (count, node))
-
- Progress(progress_function)
- </file>
- </scons_example>
-
- <para>
-
- Of course, if you choose,
- you could completely ignore the
- <varname>node</varname> argument to the function,
- and just print a count,
- or anything else you wish.
-
- </para>
-
- <para>
-
- (Note that there's an obvious follow-on question here:
- how would you find the total number of nodes
- that <emphasis>will be</emphasis>
- evaluated so you can tell the user how
- close the build is to finishing?
- Unfortunately, in the general case,
- there isn't a good way to do that,
- short of having &SCons; evaluate its
- dependency graph twice,
- first to count the total and
- the second time to actually build the targets.
- This would be necessary because
- you can't know in advance which
- target(s) the user actually requested
- to be built.
- The entire build may consist of thousands of Nodes,
- for example,
- but maybe the user specifically requested
- that only a single object file be built.)
-
- </para>
-
- </section>
-
- <section>
- <title>Printing Detailed Build Status: the &GetBuildFailures; Function</title>
-
- <para>
-
- SCons, like most build tools, returns zero status to
- the shell on success and nonzero status on failure.
- Sometimes it's useful to give more information about
- the build status at the end of the run, for instance
- to print an informative message, send an email, or
- page the poor slob who broke the build.
-
- </para>
-
- <para>
-
- SCons provides a &GetBuildFailures; method that
- you can use in a python <function>atexit</function> function
- to get a list of objects describing the actions that failed
- while attempting to build targets. There can be more
- than one if you're using <literal>-j</literal>. Here's a
- simple example:
-
- </para>
-
- <scons_example name="gbf1">
- <file name="SConstruct" printme="1">
- import atexit
-
- def print_build_failures():
- from SCons.Script import GetBuildFailures
- for bf in GetBuildFailures():
- print "%s failed: %s" % (bf.node, bf.errstr)
- atexit.register(print_build_failures)
- </file>
- </scons_example>
-
- <para>
-
- The <function>atexit.register</function> call
- registers <function>print_build_failures</function>
- as an <function>atexit</function> callback, to be called
- before &SCons; exits. When that function is called,
- it calls &GetBuildFailures; to fetch the list of failed objects.
- See the man page
- for the detailed contents of the returned objects;
- some of the more useful attributes are
- <literal>.node</literal>,
- <literal>.errstr</literal>,
- <literal>.filename</literal>, and
- <literal>.command</literal>.
- The <literal>filename</literal> is not necessarily
- the same file as the <literal>node</literal>; the
- <literal>node</literal> is the target that was
- being built when the error occurred, while the
- <literal>filename</literal>is the file or dir that
- actually caused the error.
- Note: only call &GetBuildFailures; at the end of the
- build; calling it at any other time is undefined.
-
- </para>
-
- <para>
-
- Here is a more complete example showing how to
- turn each element of &GetBuildFailures; into a string:
-
- </para>
-
- <scons_example name="gbf2">
- <file name="SConstruct" printme="1">
- # Make the build fail if we pass fail=1 on the command line
- if ARGUMENTS.get('fail', 0):
- Command('target', 'source', ['/bin/false'])
-
- def bf_to_str(bf):
- """Convert an element of GetBuildFailures() to a string
- in a useful way."""
- import SCons.Errors
- if bf is None: # unknown targets product None in list
- return '(unknown tgt)'
- elif isinstance(bf, SCons.Errors.StopError):
- return str(bf)
- elif bf.node:
- return str(bf.node) + ': ' + bf.errstr
- elif bf.filename:
- return bf.filename + ': ' + bf.errstr
- return 'unknown failure: ' + bf.errstr
- import atexit
-
- def build_status():
- """Convert the build status to a 2-tuple, (status, msg)."""
- from SCons.Script import GetBuildFailures
- bf = GetBuildFailures()
- if bf:
- # bf is normally a list of build failures; if an element is None,
- # it's because of a target that scons doesn't know anything about.
- status = 'failed'
- failures_message = "\n".join(["Failed building %s" % bf_to_str(x)
- for x in bf if x is not None])
- else:
- # if bf is None, the build completed successfully.
- status = 'ok'
- failures_message = ''
- return (status, failures_message)
-
- def display_build_status():
- """Display the build status. Called by atexit.
- Here you could do all kinds of complicated things."""
- status, failures_message = build_status()
- if status == 'failed':
- print "FAILED!!!!" # could display alert, ring bell, etc.
- elif status == 'ok':
- print "Build succeeded."
- print failures_message
-
- atexit.register(display_build_status)
- </file>
- </scons_example>
-
- <para>
-
- When this runs, you'll see the appropriate output:
-
- </para>
-
- <scons_output example="gbf2">
- <scons_output_command>scons -Q</scons_output_command>
- <scons_output_command>scons -Q fail=1</scons_output_command>
- </scons_output>
-
- </section>