SCons is a computer software build tool that automatically analyzes source code file dependencies and operating system adaptation requirements from a software project description and generates final binary executables for installation on the target operating system platform. Its function is analogous to the traditional GNU build system based on the make utility and the autoconf tools. SCons generates project configurations and build process implementations in the form of Python scripts.

History and related projects

SCons software history started with the Cons software construction utility created by Bob Sidebotham in 1999. Cons was written in the Perl language. It served as a base for the ScCons build tool, a design which won the Software Carpentry project SC Build competition in August 2000. ScCons was the foundation for SCons. SCons inspired the creation of Waf, formerly known as SCons/BKsys, which emerged in the KDE community. For some time, there were plans to use it as the build tool for KDE 4 and beyond, but that effort was abandoned in favor of CMake. Notable applications that use SCons include the following: The Battle for Wesnoth, Battlefield 1942, Doom 3, FCEUX, gem5, gpsd, GtkRadiant, Madagascar, Mixxx, MongoDB, Nullsoft Scriptable Install System, OpenNebula, VMware,, Wolfenstein: Enemy Territory, XORP and MCA2, openpilot and Godot. .csig is the SCons Content Signature file format.

Major features

Major SCons features include the following:

Examples

The following example is a very simple SConstruct file that compiles the C program file hello-world.c using the default platform compiler: The following is a more complex example that creates an environment used to build the program hello: