[Scons-dev] adding more configure tests to SCons

[Dirk Bächle]

Hi Carnë,

On 26.01.2015 14:41, Carnë Draug wrote:
> Hi
>
> I have a set of configure tests which today I have copied and paste into
> my 4th project.  They are really simple and very general use-case [1], so
> I am thinking of contributing them to SCons.  They check for LaTeX document
> class, package, availability of a program, and perl modules.  At least the
> last two have counterparts on autoconf.
>
> Can I contribute them to SCons?  I am aware of the SCons autoconf recipes
> wiki page [2] but that's far from ideal.  I wonder if the existence of such
> page means that such recipes are not desired on SCons.
>

thank you very much for showing your interest in contributing to the project. I didn't find the time to take a closer look at your 
additions yet, but I'm sure they're great.

> If not, is there any sort of SCons extras?  autoconf has at least the
> autoconf-archive [3].
>

We already discussed a thing like this in the past...but so far didn't take any action(s). But we can do this now. ;) My idea would 
be to simply setup an additional "scons_contrib" repo with the following folder structure:

scons_contrib
└── SCons
     ├── Config
     └── Tool

We could collect all Autoconf-like modules/packages in "Config", and "Tool" would be for snapshots of external Tools (as listed in 
the ToolsIndex). The "scons_contrib" would get a setup.py for an easy install to the current system. By adding the "scons_contrib" 
path to the start script (script/scons.py) a user could then access all Tools and Config modules with:

   import SCons.Tool
   import SCons.Config

in his SConstructs/SConscripts.

Comments? Ideas? Objections?

Best regards,

Dirk