Poor error feedback if g++ compiler is not installed

[bdbaddog]

This issue was originally created at: 2008-01-03 08:18:52.
This issue was reported by: knute.
knute said at 2008-01-03 08:18:52

Attempted to build a C++ project on a newly installed Linux (Ubuntu) system
which had gcc installed, but not g++. The result was that scons attempted to
compile the C++ files using an "o" command, like this:

o path/to/foo.o -c path/to/foo.cpp
sh: o: not found

After much debugging I figured out that the CXX environment variable was None
because g++ was not installed. "sudo apt-get install g++" resolved the problem.

Expected behavior: I think scons should have failed with an informative error
message rather than attempting to execute the nonsense command "o".

gregnoel said at 2008-04-14 11:17:32

Bug party triage.

Comment: One strategy to deal with this might be to start using ToolInitializer
for the less-commonly used Builders (BitKeeper, CVS, Perforce, SCCS, SVN, lex,
yacc, dvi*, *tex, gs, swig, rpm, ...), add the requirement that they must be
individually configured (env.Tool('xxx')) before their variables can be expected
to exist, and make the Tools smarter about picking up pre-set variables (for
backward compatibility). Gradually ween users away from using uninitialized
variables until you can think about using ToolInitializer for the C and C++
toolchains.

Or, of course, some other mechanism that does the same thing with very high
performance.

jaredgrubb said at 2008-07-13 19:08:57

This issue and Bug 863 appear to be similar issues.

gregnoel said at 2008-07-16 13:43:31

http://scons.org/wiki/BetterErrorMessages is a description of how this situation
should be handled. At the time this comment is posted, it's an early draft, and
comments and questions from those who have encountered the situation would be
appreciated.

gregnoel said at 2008-12-26 13:27:32

Adjust triage of issues.

gregnoel said at 2009-02-22 12:30:13

Bug party triage. Accumulate issues with this underlying problem as dups of a
common base issue.

*** This issue has been marked as a duplicate of 863 ***

gregnoel said this issue is a duplicate of #863 at 2009-02-22 12:30:13.