Miniscons

SCons builders.

Motivation

When writing an SConstruct.py configuration it is difficult to:

• Specify libraries and warnings for each build since the default environment is global
• Declare executable targets that depend on builds and don't need to be built themselves
• Parse outputs from conan to get include paths for build dependencies since they don't appear in the exported conandeps
• Declare and chain together aliases for external scripts

We can use miniscons to keep the SConstruct.py file short and get an interface like this:

builds: build
  tests

targets: start -> build
  test -> tests

scripts: clang-tidy
  cppclean

routines: lint -> [clang-tidy, cppclean]

flags: --dump

Installing

pip install miniscons

Documentation

Documentation and more detailed examples are hosted on Github Pages.

 Usage

Parse the SConscript_conandeps if you are using conan:

from miniscons import conan

env = conan()

Add the builds with their specific warning flags and libs to include:

from miniscons import Build, flags, packages
from walkmate import tree

build = Build(
    "build",
    tree("src", r"(?<!\.spec)\.cpp$"),
    flags("c++11", ["shadow"]),
)

tests = Build(
    "tests",
    tree("src", r"\.cpp$", ["main.cpp"]),
    flags("c++11"),
    packages(["gtest"]),
)

Add the executable targets that depend on the builds with their runtime arguments:

from miniscons import Target

start = Target("start", build)

test = Target("test", tests, ["--gtest_brief"])

Add the scripts to invoke your tooling:

from miniscons import Script
from walkmate import tree

cppclean = Script("cppclean", ["."])

includes = tests.packages["CPPPATH"]

tidy = Script(
    "clang-tidy",
    [tree("src", r"\.(cpp)$"), "--", [f"-I{i}" for i in includes]],
)

Add the routines and flags for your interface:

from miniscons import Flag, Routine

lint = Routine("lint", [cppclean, tidy])

dump = Flag("--dump")

Register all the declarations with the environment and add handlers for each flag:

from miniscons import Tasks
from SCons.Script.Main import GetOption

cli = Tasks(
    [build, tests],
    [start, test],
    [tidy, cppclean],
    [lint],
    [dump],
)

cli.register(env)

if GetOption("dump"):
    cli.dump()

Now if we run

scons --dump

We get our interface:

scons: Reading SConscript files ...

builds: build
  tests

targets: start -> build
  test -> tests

scripts: clang-tidy
  cppclean

routines: lint -> [clang-tidy, cppclean]

flags: --dump

Discussion

Why not use a simple task runner for scripts and routines?

Some scripts need access to the include paths that appear in the SConstruct.py file so they need to be integrated into the scons workflow.

Tooling

Dependencies

To install dependencies:

yarn install
pip install .[all]

Tests

To run tests:

thx test

Documentation

To generate the documentation locally:

thx docs

Linters

To run linters:

thx lint

Formatters

To run formatters:

thx format

Contributing

Please read this repository's Code of Conduct which outlines our collaboration standards and the Changelog for details on breaking changes that have been made.

This repository adheres to semantic versioning standards. For more information on semantic versioning visit SemVer.

Bump2version is used to version and tag changes. For example:

bump2version patch

Contributors

• Joel Lefkowitz - Initial work

Remarks

Lots of love to the open source community!