path: root/doc/user/preface.in

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  <para>

  Thank you for taking the time to read about &SCons;.
  &SCons; is a next-generation
  software construction tool,
  or make tool--that is, a software utility
  for building software (or other files)
  and keeping built software up-to-date
  whenever the underlying input files change.

  </para>

  <para>

  The most distinctive thing about &SCons;
  is that its configuration files are
  actually <emphasis>scripts</emphasis>,
  written in the &Python; programming language.
  This is in contrast to most alternative build tools,
  which typically invent a new language to
  configure the build.
  &SCons; still has a learning curve, of course,
  because you have to know what functions to call
  to set up your build properly,
  but the underlying syntax used should be familiar
  to anyone who has ever looked at a Python script.

  </para>

  <para>

  Paradoxically,
  using Python as the configuration file format
  makes &SCons;
  <emphasis>easier</emphasis>
  for non-programmers to learn
  than the cryptic languages of other build tools,
  which are usally invented by programmers for other programmers.
  This is in no small part to the
  consistency and readability that are built in to Python.
  It just so happens that making a real, live
  scripting language the basis for the
  configuration files
  makes it a snap for more accomplished programmers
  to do more complicated things with builds,
  as necessary.

  </para>

  <section>
  <title>Why &SCons;?</title>

    <para>

    &SCons; is a response to a perennial problem:
    building software is harder than it should be.
    In a nutshell:  the old, reliable model of the
    venerable and ubiquitous &Make; program
    has had a hard time keeping up with
    how complicated building software has become.
    The fact that &Make; has kept up as well as it has is impressive,
    and a testament to how the simplicity.
    But anyone who has wrestled with &Automake; and &Autoconf;
    to try to guarantee that a bit of software
    will build correctly on multiple platforms
    can tell you that it takes a lot of work to get right.

    </para>

  </section>

  <section>
  <title>&SCons; Principles</title>

    <para>

    There are a few overriding principles
    we try to live up to in designing and implementing &SCons:

    </para>

    <variablelist>

      <varlistentry>
      <term>Correctness</term>

      <listitem>
      <para>

      First and foremost,
      by default, &SCons; guarantees a correct build
      even if it means sacrificing performance a little.
      We strive to guarantee the build is correct
      regardless of how the software being built is structured,
      how it may have been written,
      or how unusual the tools are that build it.

      </para>
      </listitem>
      </varlistentry>

      <varlistentry>
      <term>Performance</term>

      <listitem>
      <para>

      Given that the build is correct,
      we try to make &SCons; build software
      as quickly as possible.
      In particular, wherever we may have needed to slow
      down the default &SCons; behavior to guarantee a correct build,
      we also try to make it easy to speed up &SCons;
      through optimization options that let you trade off
      guaranteed correctness for speed.

      </para>
      </listitem>
      </varlistentry>

      <varlistentry>
      <term>Convenience</term>

      <listitem>
      <para>

      &SCons; tries to do as much for you out of the box as reasonable,
      including detecting the right tools on your system
      and using them correctly to build the software.

      </para>
      </listitem>
      </varlistentry>

    </variablelist>

    <para>

    In a nutshell, we try hard to make &SCons; just
    "do the right thing" and build software correctly,
    with a minimum of hassles.

    </para>

  </section>

  <section>
  <title>History</title>

    <para>

    &SCons; originated with a design
    that was submitted to the Software Carpentry
    design competition in 2000.

    </para>

    <para>

    &SCons; is the direct descendant
    of a Perl utility called &Cons;.
    &Cons; in turn based some of its ideas on &Jam;,
    a build tool from Perforce Systems.

    </para>

    <para>

    XXX

    </para>

  </section>

  <!--

  <section>
  <title>Conventions</title>

    <para>

    XXX

    </para>

  </section>

  -->

  <section>
  <title>Acknowledgements</title>

    <para>

    &SCons; would not exist without a lot of help
    from a lot of people,
    many of whom may not even be aware
    that they helped or served as inspiration.
    So in no particular order,
    and at the risk of leaving out someone:

    </para>

    <para>

    First and foremost,
    &SCons; owes a tremendous debt to Bob Sidebotham,
    the original author of the classic Perl-based &Cons; tool
    which Bob first released to the world back around 1996.
    Bob's work on Cons classic provided the underlying architecture
    and model of specifying a build configuration
    using a real scripting language.
    My real-world experience working on Cons
    informed many of the design decisions in SCons,
    including the improved parallel build support,
    making Builder objects easily definable by users,
    and separating the build engine from the wrapping interface.

    </para>

    <para>

    Greg Wilson was instrumental in getting
    &SCons; started as a real project
    when he initiated the Software Carpentry design
    competition in February 2000.
    Without that nudge,
    marrying the advantages of the Cons classic
    architecture with the readability of Python
    might have just stayed no more than a nice idea.

    </para>

    <para>

    The entire &SCons; team have been
    absolutely wonderful to work with,
    and &SCons; would be nowhere near as useful a
    tool without the energy, enthusiasm
    and time people have contributed over the past few years.
    The "core team"
    of Chad Austin, Anthony Roach, Charles Crain,
    Steve Leblanc, Greg Spencer and Christoph Wiedemann
    have been great about reviewing my (and other) changes
    and catching problems before they get in the code base.
    Of particular technical note:
    Anthony's outstanding and innovative work on the tasking engine
    has given &SCons; a vastly superior parallel build model;
    Charles has been the master of the crucial Node infrastructure;
    Christoph's work on the Configure infrastructure
    has added crucial Autoconf-like functionality;
    and Greg has provided excellent support
    for Microsoft Visual Studio.

    </para>

    <para>

    Special thanks to David Snopek for contributing
    his underlying "Autocons" code that formed
    the basis of Christoph's work with the Configure functionality.
    David was extremely generous in making
    this code available to &SCons;,
    given that he initially released it under the GPL
    and &SCons; is released under a less-restrictive MIT-style license.

    </para>

    <para>

    &SCons; has received contributions
    from many other people, of course:
    Matt Balvin (extending long command-line support on Win32),
    Allen Bierbaum (extensions and fixes to Options),
    Steve Christensen (help text sorting and function action signature fixes),
    Michael Cook (avoiding losing signal bits from executed commands),
    Derrick 'dman' Hudson (),
    Alex Jacques (work on the Win32 scons.bat file),
    Stephen Kennedy (performance enhancements),
    Lachlan O'Dea (SharedObject() support for masm
    and normalized paths for the WhereIs() function),
    Damyan Pepper (keeping output like Make),
    Jeff Petkau (significant fixes for CacheDir and other areas),
    Stefan Reichor (Ghostscript support),
    Zed Shaw (Append() and Replace() environment methods),
    Terrel Shumway (build and test fixes, as well as the SCons Wiki),
    sam th (dynamic checks for utilities)
    and Moshe Zadke (Debian packaging).

    </para>

    <para>

    Thanks to Peter Miller
    for his splendid change management system, &Aegis;,
    which has provided the &SCons; project
    with a robust development methodology from day one,
    and which showed me how you could
    integrate incremental regression tests into
    a practical development cycle
    (years before eXtreme Programming arrived on the scene).

    </para>

    <para>

    And last, thanks to Guido van Rossum
    for his elegant scripting language,
    which is the basis not only for the &SCons; implementation,
    but for the interface itself.

    </para>

  </section>

  <section>
  <title>Contact</title>

    <para>

    The best way to contact people involved with SCons,
    including the author,
    is through the SCons mailing lists.

    </para>

    <para>

    If you want to ask general questions about how to use &SCons;
    send email to &scons-users;.

    </para>

    <para>

    If you want to contact the &SCons; development community directly,
    send email to &scons-devel;.

    </para>

    <para>

    If you want to receive announcements about &SCons,
    join the low-volume &scons-announce; mailing list.

    </para>

  </section>