SCons support for D

[Mike Parker]

On 12/8/2011 6:13 PM, Andrew Gough wrote:
> On Wed, 7 Dec 2011 20:56:17 +0100
> Jens Mueller<jens.k.mueller at gmx.de>  wrote:
>
>> Andrew Gough wrote:
>>> On Tue, 06 Dec 2011 18:14:25 +0000
>>> Russel Winder<russel at russel.org.uk>  wrote:
>>>
>>>> SCons is a Python-based build tool to replace Make and much of the
>>>> Autotools functionality.  It has D support as part of the core.
>>>> This support is though in need of development.
>>>>
>>>> The new Mercurial/BitBucket infrastructure for developing SCons
>>>> (replacing the old Subversion/Tigris set up) is now in place, a
>>>> new release 2.1.0 has been declared and everything is open for
>>>> business leading to a 2.2.0 release.
>>>>
>>>> I got my changes to support DMD 2 into this release :-)
>>>>
>>>> However, support for GDC, LDC, etc. is almost certainly still
>>>> sadly lacking, and indeed the support for DMD almost certainly
>>>> needs a severe refactoring and most likely a rewrite.
>>>>
>>>> Rather than people having to work on a clone of SCons in order to
>>>> work on the tool, I have created a separate Mercurial repository
>>>> (https://bitbucket.org/russel/scons_dmd_new) as a development
>>>> version of just the tool.  When a new version of this separate
>>>> tool is declared I create a pull request for the SCons mainline
>>>> to get the new version in the next version of SCons.
>>>>
>>>> Is anyone else other than me interested in using SCons as a build
>>>> tool with D code?  If there is, perhaps we can collaborate in
>>>> some way to progress SCons support for all the various
>>>> realizations of D?
>>>>
>>>
>>> I think the build tool question is in need of the same level of high
>>> level design and support that Steve Teale is working on for
>>> std.database/std.sql.
>>>
>>> It seems there is SCons support (python), CMake, Orbit (Ruby), DSSS
>>> (D1 only?), xfbuild, dake, rdmd options - I've added preliminary D
>>> support to premake.
>>
>> Where do I find your changes for premake?
>
> https://bitbucket.org/goughy/premake-dev-d
>
>>
>>> Would it be a good idea to thrash out the arguments for/against a
>>> particular tool, and build/support just one?  The community doesn't
>>> seem big enough to be so fragmented.  Java has Ant, Scala has sbt  -
>>> surely D should have a canonical build tool?
>>
>> I'm unsure whether D needs its own configuration/build tool. It
>> definitely needs a package manager.
>>
>> For building there are different options but usually it's make. Most
>> people (at least for sure on Unix variants) are using it. I think
>> Scons does both building and configuring. Just want to say that you
>> can have different tools for these jobs or single one.
>> Jacob's build tool looks good but I wonder what are the major
>> improvements over e.g. make (portability is an issue with make; maybe
>> simplicity).
>>
>> For configuring there are some options and so far none of them is
>> preferred by a majority. Different people weigh different aspects
>> differently. But it seems people are moving away from configure
>> scripts.
>>
>> As Russell already said, several build/configuration tools are used
>> and there is no clear winner in general. So I think it's very nice
>> that you have added support for D to premake. So we then have SCons
>> (build and configuration), CMake (configuration and several build
>> tools via generators), rdmd (can generate dependencies for Makefile),
>> Jacob as a build tool and there are several others specifically for D
>> and premake.
>>
>> I'm not sure about the state of each of these. But SCons and CMake
>> work with dmd (both do configuration). premake is also configuration.
>> Regarding build tools I wonder how important they are. make works
>> fairly well.
>>
>> Jens
>
> The reasons I chose premake were primarily:
>
> 1. No external dependencies (lua embedded in an executable)
> 2. Simple configuration
> 3. Cross platform
> 4. Generates native build scripts: make, VS, Code::Blocks etc etc
>
> I have to point out that I have only added DMD+make support as that is
> all I needed at the time, but have plans (who doesn't :-D) to add
> support for LDC, GDC, and other build chains.
>

I've considered doing this several times in the past. Managing the 
makefiles in Derelict has been a PITA, to say the least. Thanks for 
sharing this!