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-<para>
-
- There are a number of things we would like to do to continue to
- improve &SCons; in the future.
-
-</para>
-
-<section>
- <title>Distutils Cooperation</title>
-
- <para>
-
- There is a certain amount of overlap between what &SCons; does
- to search out and make use of various compilers on a system, and
- the impressively complete job that the Distutils do of describing
- much the same thing. Collaborating to provide some sort of common
- interface between the two tools would benefit both tools.
-
- </para>
-
-</section>
-
-<section>
- <title>Additional Builder Support</title>
-
- <para>
-
- Adding additional builders would broaden the
- potential user base. In rough order of importance:
-
- </para>
-
- <variablelist>
-
- <varlistentry>
- <term>Java</term>
- <listitem>
- <para>
-
- Given the popularity of Java, support for it would greatly
- increase the appeal of &SCons; in the large community of Java
- users.
-
- </para>
-
- <para>
-
- Good support for Java is, however, a tricky
- proposition. Because the Java compiler can make decisions
- about compiling other files based on what classes it finds
- in a file, it behaves "unpredictably" from the point of
- view of an outside build tool like &SCons; or &Make;. Some
- sort of sophisticated scanning of Java source code to
- identify what other classes are likely to be compiled
- would be an obvious first step, but notice that here
- &SCons; would be scanning the file to find additional
- targets to be built. This is the inverse of the sort of
- <literal>#include</literal> scanning performed
- for C files, in which &SCons; is looking for additional
- <emphasis>dependencies</emphasis>.
-
- </para>
- </listitem>
- </varlistentry>
-
- <varlistentry>
- <term>Documentation toolchains</term>
- <listitem>
- <para>
-
- A number of early adopters
- are using &SCons; to
- build documents
- from TeX or DocBook source files.
- Built-in support for
- various documentation toolchains
- would be an obvious boon
- for many people.
-
- </para>
- </listitem>
- </varlistentry>
-
- <varlistentry>
- <term>C#</term>
- <listitem>
- <para>
-
- The reality is that anything that Microsoft does will doubtless
- have a wide audience. Turning &SCons;' back on that would be
- cutting off its nose to spite its face.
-
- </para>
- </listitem>
- </varlistentry>
-
- <varlistentry>
- <term>Fortran</term>
- <listitem>
- <para>
-
- Despite the fact that &SCons; is no longer directly
- associated with Software Carpentry, it still shares the
- same goal: to make programming easier for more than just
- programmers. To that end, good Fortran support would
- help a great many physical scientists and other computer
- <emphasis>users</emphasis> out there who still rely on Fortran
- for a great deal of their work.
-
- </para>
- </listitem>
- </varlistentry>
-
- </variablelist>
-
-</section>
-
-<section>
- <title>Database Interface</title>
-
- <para>
-
- The Nodes in an &SCons; dependency graph aren't only restricted to
- files. Creating an interface to mSQL or MySQL databases would allow
- the possibility of updating external files in response to changes in
- database fields, or vice versa. This could be handy, for example,
- for generating a cache of static web pages from a database that only
- need re-generating when the appropriate database objects change.
-
- </para>
-
-</section>
-
-<section>
- <title>Tool Integration</title>
-
- <para>
-
- &SCons; should work well with as many popular Integrated Development
- Environments (IDEs) and tool chains as possible: Komodo, Microsoft
- Visual Studio, ClearCase, etc. Suggestions for additional tools are
- welcome.
-
- </para>
-
-</section>
-
-<section>
- <title>Makefile Interface</title>
-
- <para>
-
- Because the &SCons; Build Engine can be embedded in any Python
- interface, there isn't any technical reason why a &Makefile;
- interpreter couldn't be written in Python and use the &SCons; Build
- Engine for its dependency analysis.
-
- </para>
-
- <para>
-
- Proof-of-concept for the idea already exists. Gary Holt's
- <literal>make++</literal> (also known as <literal>makepp</literal>)
- is a Perl implementation of just such a &Makefile; interpreter. It
- could possible serve as a model for a Python version, in much the
- same way the &Cons; design served as the prototype for &SCons;.
-
- </para>
-
-</section>