[Scons-dev] prefix, bindir, datadir, libdir, etc.

[Russel Winder]

On Sat, 2014-05-10 at 15:06 +0100, Russel Winder wrote:
[…]

> We should though commit to turning this into a production system for

> SCons. I am not sure it belongs in the core, but there needs to be an

> easy way of introducing it to projects and people. I am guessing that

> checking out a repository into ${project_directory}/site_scons or

> $HOME/.site_scons and relying on those directories being added to the

> sys.path is that easy way. Which leads to us needing an index of such

> things just as we have an index of tools.

> 

> So in a sense everything is already in place :-)


Thinking on this for a few seconds more: if this package is not part of
the SCons core, and there is no "SCons extras" because SCons was
supposed to be "batteries included" (*), then there has to be a way for
people to add the package to their project and store it in version
control and ship it with their project. Whilst it is reasonable for a
user of a project in source form to install SCons, they should not have
to ferret the Internet for the extras and tools needed to build the
project.

If all projects used Git then it would be possible to use Git submodules
to handle this. However projects may use Git, Mercurial, Bazaar,
Perforce, Subversion, CVS, ClearCase,… (OK, so some of those are a bit
unlikely ;-) so we cannot rely on a Git feature.

Returning to (*) I wonder if we are getting close to a situation where
"batteries included" is the wrong approach and that the core should be
modularized. I am not sure about how this would work in Windows without
using Chocolatey, but for proper operating systems with package
management (so MacPorts or HomeBrew on OSX), having a scons-core,
scons-extra-tools, scons-extra-packages, etc. would work easily.

-- 
Russel.
=============================================================================
Dr Russel Winder      t: +44 20 7585 2200   voip: sip:russel.winder at ekiga.net
41 Buckmaster Road    m: +44 7770 465 077   xmpp: russel at winder.org.uk
London SW11 1EN, UK   w: www.russel.org.uk  skype: russel_winder