[Scons-dev] SCons doesn't bootstrap without libxml2

Dirk Bächle tshortik at gmx.de
Wed Feb 19 03:31:23 EST 2014


On 19.02.2014 06:15, Bill Deegan wrote:

> Anatoly,

>

> bootstrap.py is not meant to be run by users, only developers.

>

> -Bill

>


I'd even go one step further and say: it's primarily meant to be run by
release managers.

It's okay if you take on this role for yourself as a developer while
you're hacking away with things, but as far as I know there is nowhere
documented that this is actually required from you. Nobody forces you
now or has forced you in the past, to run this additional step, right?
Or is it your understanding that every developer is required to run the
full build scenario?

I can understand that you are a little confused, and maybe even
frustrated, because suddenly things that seemed to work for you show a
different behaviour. But that's what happens. Time goes by and things
change. And we want some changes for the SCons project, to make it
better, right?
And that's what we did, we made SCons better such that you don't have to
write MAN pages by hand anymore for example. As a consequence of this,
you simply don't get away anymore with what you did in the past: running
only half of the packaging test without the documentation.
But this is also a change to the better side and not meant to be against
you personally. It reduces the work load for the actual release managers
because errors in the documentation syntax are revealed much earlier in
the development process.

And you can still get back to your old routine and workflow and help the
project even more and better than before, if you decide to take that
little step and install the libxml2 or lxml Python bindings.
And if you decide to not install it, and simply skip the full packaging
build, that'll be fine with everyone too...and you can save even more of
your time and invest it in development itself.

Dirk



More information about the Scons-dev mailing list