[A-A-P-develop] Re: [scons-devel] auto-configuration plans

[David S. <xe...@ne...>]

Bram Moolenaar said:
>> I think the abstraction is pretty obvious here.  Only the portion that
>> actually does the compiling, linking, and running is SCons specfic (or
>> should be ;-).  This consists mainly of the SConf class.  The actual
>> configure checks are simply Python functions that call the Try* members.
>> There are some extraneus SCons-isms in these functions for automatically
>> setting the environment which would also have to be abstracted but they
>> look minor at first glance.
>
> Making an interface to preform the building should not be difficult.
> Although it might be required to remove a few SCons-isms.  This means
> the Environment object is not available in the config module.  Only
> environment variables, such as $CC, $CFLAGS, etc.  This probably has to
> be separated anyway, so that the results of the config process are
> separate from settings done in the SConsscript.

I am not sure exactly what you mean by the last sentance here.  Why would
you want them to be seperate?  They need to be used for building later.

> This has been discussed before.  The problem is that it would take a lot
> of effort to make the SCons engine work with Aap.  Although the engine
> has been designed to be used with other scripting languages, it is very
> specific to how SCons works.  I have tried to use it for Aap but got
> stuck.  I couldn't figure out how to make it work.
>
> I have challenged the SCons developers before to show how the SCons
> engine could be used with Aap, but this has not produced results.
> Apparently there is nobody willing to invest time in this.  By now it
> will be very difficult anyway (e.g., Aap uses scopes for variables).

Essentially this means that the A-A-P code would interpret the recipes,
but instead of using your custom build engine, it would use SCons calls. 
For example:

:program myprog : main.c
			version.c
			work.c
			util.c

Would result in calls like:

env = Environment(CFLAGS = cur_aap_cflags, LIBFLAGS = cur_app_libflags, ...)
env.Program(target = "myprog", source = aap_sources)

Anyway, I know it would be a big undertaking.  It just seems to me that
both build tools would benefit greatly from sharing the underlying build
system.  If you would be willing to try again, I would be willing to lend
a hand (although my time is limited).

Thank you.
  -- David Snopek

Satellite Computing Solutions, LLC