path: root/doc/user/build-install.xml

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  <para>

  This chapter will take you through the basic steps
  of installing &SCons; on your system,
  and building &SCons; if you don't have a
  pre-built package available
  (or simply prefer the flexibility of building it yourself).
  Before that, however, this chapter will also describe the basic steps
  involved in installing Python on your system,
  in case that is necessary.
  Fortunately, both &SCons; and Python
  are very easy to install on almost any system,
  and Python already comes installed on many systems.

  </para>

  <!--

  <para>

  Lastly, this chapter also contains a section that
  provides a brief overview of the Python programming language,
  which is the language used to implement &SCons;,
  and which forms the basis of the &SCons; configuration files.
  Becoming familiar with some Python concepts will make it easier
  to understand many of the examples in this User's Guide.
  Nevertheless, it <emphasis>is</emphasis> possible
  to configure simple &SCons; builds without knowing Python,
  so you can skip this section if you
  want to dive in and pick up things
  by example- -or, of course, if you are 
  already familiar with Python.

  </para>

  -->

  <section>
  <title>Installing Python</title>

    <para>

    Because &SCons; is written in Python,
    you must obviously have Python installed on your system
    to use &SCons;.
    Before you try to install Python,
    you should check to see if Python is already
    available on your system  by typing
    <userinput>python -V</userinput>
    (capital 'V')
    or
    <userinput>python --version</userinput>
    at your system's command-line prompt.

    </para>

    <screen>
       $ <userinput>python -V</userinput>
       Python 2.5.1
    </screen>

    <para>

    And on a Windows system with Python installed:

    </para>

    <screen>
       C:\><userinput>python -V</userinput>
       Python 2.5.1
    </screen>

    <para>

    If Python is not installed on your system,
    you will see an error message
    stating something like "command not found"
    (on UNIX or Linux)
    or "'python' is not recognized
    as an internal or external command, operable progam or batch file"
    (on Windows).
    In that case, you need to install Python
    before you can install &SCons;.

    </para>

    <para>

    (Note that the <option>-V</option> option
    was added to Python version 2.0,
    so if your system only has an earlier version available
    you may see an
    <literal>"Unknown option: -V"</literal>
    error message.)

    </para>

    <para>

    The standard location for information
    about downloading and installing Python is
    <ulink url="http://www.python.org/download/">http://www.python.org/download/</ulink>.
    See that page for information about
    how to download and install Python on your system.

    </para>

    <para>

    &SCons; will work with any version of Python from 1.5.2 or later.
    If you need to install Python and have a choice,
    we recommend using the most recent Python 2.5 version available.
    Python 2.5 has significant improvements
    that help speed up the performance of &SCons;.

    </para>

  </section>

  <section>
  <title>Installing &SCons; From Pre-Built Packages</title>

    <para>

    &SCons; comes pre-packaged for installation on a number of systems,
    including Linux and Windows systems.
    You do not need to read this entire section,
    you should need to read only the section
    appropriate to the type of system you're running on.

    </para>

    <section>
    <title>Installing &SCons; on Red Hat (and Other RPM-based) Linux Systems</title>

      <para>

      &SCons; comes in RPM (Red Hat Package Manager) format,
      pre-built and ready to install on Red Hat Linux,
      Fedora,
      or any other Linux distribution that uses RPM.
      Your distribution may
      already have an &SCons; RPM built specifically for it;
      many do, including SUSE, Mandrake and Fedora.
      You can check for the availability of an &SCons; RPM
      on your distribution's download servers,
      or by consulting an RPM search site like
      <ulink url="http://www.rpmfind.net/">http://www.rpmfind.net/</ulink> or
      <ulink url="http://rpm.pbone.net/">http://rpm.pbone.net/</ulink>.

      </para>

      <para>

      If your distribution supports installation via
      <application>yum</application>,
      you should be able to install &SCons; by running:

      </para>

      <screen>
        # <userinput>yum install scons</userinput>
      </screen>

      <para>

      If your Linux distribution does not already have
      a specific &SCons; RPM file,
      you can download and install from the
      generic RPM provided by the &SCons; project.
      This will install the 
      SCons script(s) in <filename>/usr/bin</filename>,
      and the SCons library modules in
      <filename>/usr/lib/scons</filename>.

      </para>

      <para>

      To install from the command line, simply download the
      appropriate <filename>.rpm</filename> file,
      and then run:

      </para>

      <screen>
        # <userinput>rpm -Uvh scons-1.3.0-1.noarch.rpm</userinput>
      </screen>

      <para>

      Or, you can use a graphical RPM package manager.
      See your package manager application's documention
      for specific instructions about
      how to use it to install a downloaded RPM.

      </para>

    </section>

    <section>
    <title>Installing &SCons; on Debian Linux Systems</title>

      <para>

      Debian Linux systems use a different package management
      format that also makes it very easy to install &SCons;.

      </para>

      <para>

      If your system is connected to the Internet,
      you can install the latest official Debian package
      by running:

      </para>

      <screen>
        # <userinput>apt-get install scons</userinput>
      </screen>

      <!--

      <para>

      Alternatively,
      you can download the Debian package built
      by the &SCons; project
      and install it manually by running:

      </para>

      <screen>
        # <userinput>db-XXX scons-*.deb</userinput>
      </screen>

      -->

    </section>

    <section>
    <title>Installing &SCons; on Windows Systems</title>

      <para>

      &SCons; provides a Windows installer
      that makes installation extremely easy.
      Download the <filename>scons-1.3.0.win32.exe</filename>
      file from the &SCons; download page at
      <ulink url="http://www.scons.org/download.php">http://www.scons.org/download.php</ulink>.
      Then all you need to do is execute the file
      (usually by clicking on its icon in Windows Explorer).
      These will take you through a small
      sequence of windows that will install
      &SCons; on your system.

      <!--
      Things are a little more complicated
      if you are using the Cygwin version of Python.
      This is because Cygwin
      tries to make a Windows system look more
      POSIX-like (or UNIX-like or Linux-like, if you prefer)
      by having the Cygwin utilities,
      including Cygwin Python,
      interpret file name arguments on the command line
      using the forward-slash (<filename>/</filename>)
      as the directory separator,
      instead of the normal Windows behavior of the
      backslash (<filename>\</filename>) as the directory separator.
      -->

      </para>

      <!--

      <section>
      <title>Installing &SCons; on Windows Systems Without Cygwin Python</title>

        <para>

        XXX

        </para>

      </section>

      <section>
      <title>Installing &SCons; on Windows Systems With Cygwin Python</title>

        <para>

        XXX

        </para>

      </section>

      -->

      <!--

      XXX - don't have the kinks worked out on how to
      get these to display properly in all formats,
      so comment them out for now.

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      <mediaobject>
        <imageobject>
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        </imageobject>
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      <screenshot>
      <mediaobject>
        <imageobject>
          <imagedata fileref="SCons-win32-install-2.jpg" format="jpg" align="center">
        </imageobject>
      </mediaobject>
      </screenshot>

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      <mediaobject>
        <imageobject>
          <imagedata fileref="SCons-win32-install-3.jpg" format="jpg" align="center">
        </imageobject>
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      </screenshot>

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        <imageobject>
          <imagedata fileref="SCons-win32-install-4.jpg" format="jpg" align="center">
        </imageobject>
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      </screenshot>

      -->

    </section>

  </section>

  <section>
  <title>Building and Installing &SCons; on Any System</title>

    <para>

    If a pre-built &SCons; package is not available for your system,
    then you can still easily build and install &SCons; using the native
    Python <filename>distutils</filename> package.

    </para>

    <para>

    The first step is to download either the
    <filename>scons-1.3.0.tar.gz</filename>
    or <filename>scons-1.3.0.zip</filename>,
    which are available from the SCons download page at
    <ulink url="http://www.scons.org/download.html">http://www.scons.org/download.html</ulink>.

    </para>

    <para>

    Unpack the archive you downloaded,
    using a utility like <application>tar</application>
    on Linux or UNIX,
    or <application>WinZip</application> on Windows.
    This will create a directory called
    <filename>scons-1.3.0</filename>,
    usually in your local directory.
    Then change your working directory to that directory
    and install &SCons; by executing the following commands:

    </para>

    <screen>
      # <userinput>cd scons-1.3.0</userinput>
      # <userinput>python setup.py install</userinput>
    </screen>

    <para>

    This will build &SCons;,
    install the &scons; script
    in the python which is used to run the setup.py's scripts directory
    (<filename>/usr/local/bin</filename> or
    <filename>C:\Python25\Scripts</filename>),
    and will install the &SCons; build engine
    in the corresponding library directory for the python used
    (<filename>/usr/local/lib/scons</filename> or
    <filename>C:\Python25\scons</filename>).
    Because these are system directories,
    you may need root (on Linux or UNIX) or Administrator (on Windows)
    privileges to install &SCons; like this.

    </para>

    <!--

    <section>
    <title>Building and Installing &SCons; in the Standard Python Library Directories</title>

      <para>

      XXX

      </para>

    </section>

    -->

    <section>
    <title>Building and Installing Multiple Versions of &SCons; Side-by-Side</title>

      <para>

      The &SCons; <filename>setup.py</filename> script
      has some extensions that support
      easy installation of multiple versions of &SCons;
      in side-by-side locations.
      This makes it easier to download and
      experiment with different versions of &SCons;
      before moving your official build process to a new version,
      for example.

      </para>

      <para>

      To install &SCons; in a version-specific location,
      add the <option>--version-lib</option> option
      when you call <filename>setup.py</filename>:

      </para>

      <screen>
        # <userinput>python setup.py install --version-lib</userinput>
      </screen>

      <para>

      This will install the &SCons; build engine
      in the
      <filename>/usr/lib/scons-1.3.0</filename>
      or
      <filename>C:\Python25\scons-1.3.0</filename>
      directory, for example.

      </para>

      <para>

      If you use the <option>--version-lib</option> option
      the first time you install &SCons;,
      you do not need to specify it each time you install
      a new version.
      The &SCons; <filename>setup.py</filename> script
      will detect the version-specific directory name(s)
      and assume you want to install all versions
      in version-specific directories.
      You can override that assumption in the future
      by explicitly specifying the <option>--standalone-lib</option> option.

      </para>

    </section>

    <section>
    <title>Installing &SCons; in Other Locations</title>

      <para>

      You can install &SCons; in locations other than
      the default by specifying the <option>--prefix=</option> option:

      </para>

      <screen>
        # <userinput>python setup.py install --prefix=/opt/scons</userinput>
      </screen>

      <para>

      This would
      install the <application>scons</application> script in
      <filename>/opt/scons/bin</filename>
      and the build engine in 
      <filename>/opt/scons/lib/scons</filename>,

      </para>

      <para>

      Note that you can specify both the <option>--prefix=</option>
      and the <option>--version-lib</option> options
      at the same type,
      in which case <filename>setup.py</filename>
      will install the build engine
      in a version-specific directory
      relative to the specified prefix.
      Adding <option>--version-lib</option> to the
      above example would install the build engine in
      <filename>/opt/scons/lib/scons-1.3.0</filename>.

      </para>

    </section>

    <section>
    <title>Building and Installing &SCons; Without Administrative Privileges</title>

      <para>

      If you don't have the right privileges to install &SCons;
      in a system location,
      simply use the <literal>--prefix=</literal> option
      to install it in a location of your choosing.
      For example,
      to install &SCons; in appropriate locations
      relative to the user's <literal>$HOME</literal> directory,
      the &scons; script in
      <filename>$HOME/bin</filename>
      and the build engine in 
      <filename>$HOME/lib/scons</filename>,
      simply type:

      </para>

      <screen>
        $ <userinput>python setup.py install --prefix=$HOME</userinput>
      </screen>

      <para>

      You may, of course, specify any other location you prefer,
      and may use the <option>--version-lib</option> option
      if you would like to install version-specific directories
      relative to the specified prefix.

      </para>

      <para>

      This can also be used to experiment with a newer
      version of &SCons; than the one installed
      in your system locations.
      Of course, the location in which you install the
      newer version of the &scons; script
      (<filename>$HOME/bin</filename> in the above example)
      must be configured in your &PATH; variable
      before the directory containing
      the system-installed version
      of the &scons; script.

      </para>

    </section>

  </section>

  <!--

  <section>
  <title>Python Basics</title>

    <para>

    This section will provide a brief overview of
    the Python programming language.
    Skip this section if you are already familiar with Python
    (or you're really intent on diving into &SCons;
    and just picking up things as you go).

    </para>

    <para>

    Python has a lot of good
    documentation freely available on-line
    to help you get started.
    The standard tutorial is available at XXX.


    </para>

    <para>

    Python is very easy to pick up.

    </para>

    <para>

    Python variables must be assigned to before they can be referenced.

    </para>

    <para>

    Assignment is like most programming languages:

    x = 1 + 2
    z = 3 * x

    </para>

    <para>

    Function calls look like most language function calls:

    a = f(g)

    </para>

    <para>

    Define functions like so:

        def func(arg1, arg2):
            return arg1 * arg 2

    The number of parameters

    </para>

    <para>

    Strings can be enclosed in single quotes or double quotes,
    backslashes are used to escape characters,
    triple-quote syntax lets you include quotes and newlines,
    raw strings begin with 'r'.

    </para>

    <para>

    Lists are enclosed in square brackets,
    list items are separated by commas.
    List references use square brackets and integer index values,
    slice notation lets you select, delete or replace a range.

    </para>

    <para>

    Dictionaries (hashes) are enclosed in curly brackets,
    : separates keys from values,
    , separates items.
    Dictionary values are referenced using square brackets.

    </para>

    <para>

    Access class attributes (including methods) using a '.'.

    </para>

    <para>

    if: statements look like

    elif: statements look like

    else: statements look like

    </para>

    <para>

    for: statements look like

    while: statements look like

    break statements look like
    
    continue statements look like

    </para>

    <para>

    pass

    </para>

  </section>

  -->