Re: [Chicken-users] alternate build tools

[Ashley Bone]

Brandon J. Van Every wrote:

> How do you feel about either a Python or a Java dependency?  I've been 
> looking into the problem of targeting multiple C/C++ compilers on 
> multiple platforms.  2 tools look like they may be "industrial 
> strength" solutions to the problem:
>
> scons, a Python script based build system
> http://www.scons.org/
>
> Ant with the ant-contrib cc Task
> http://ant.apache.org/
> http://ant-contrib.sourceforge.net/
> http://ant-contrib.sourceforge.net/cc.html (list of supported compilers)


Thought I'd add my experiences to this idea.

I've been using scons for 2 or 3 years now to build software on IRIX, 
linux, and windows.
It's a very nice tool once you get familiar with its idiosyncracies.  
The build scripts are
nearly 100% portable - typically you just need a few lines listing any 
platform specific
libraries to link with and any non-standard compiler flags, such as 
optimizations.

scons also has some sort of built-in autoconf-like facility (called 
sconsf, I believe).  I've
never used it and am not sure what its features are, though.  I believe 
there is also some
kind of stand-alone version that you can package with distributable 
files if you don't
want to force users to download and install scons separately.

Currently I use scons to build all my scheme libraries and programs 
using chicken on
both linux and win32 (with msvc).  I have a simple chicken scanner, and 
builders for
chicken libraries, programs, and embedded programs, along with some 
utility functions
such as a function to parse the output from chicken-config.

I don't have any experience with ant, but if there's interest in going 
the scons route,
I'd be happy to lend a hand.

ashley
**