[Scons-users] Packaging SCons tools

[Matthias-Christian Ott]

It seems all external SCons tools do not have an automated installation
mechanism (some copy their files to the user's site_scons directory via
Install) and with several tools it soon becomes tedious to setup, manage
and replicate the site_scons directory, especially for new developers
who join a team. On operating systems and distributions with proper
package management software this is not a problem, you simply create a
package repository and a meta-package and the installation and automatic
updates become just some clicks or a single command line. On Microsoft
Windows I think it would be strange to have a separate installer for
each tool and without Active Directory, SCCM or similar software you
have do manual updates.

I thought that it would make sense to package SCons tools with
distutils. Since SCons doesn't Python standard paths, one would have to
generate a system specific setup.cfg or something like this to change
the paths before installation [1]. I'm not sure if this is compatible
with distutil's portability goals. Another option would be to abuse
package_data [2].

What do you think about this? Do you have better ideas?

Regards,
Matthias-Christian

[1] http://docs.python.org/2/install/#custom-installation
[2] http://chrismiles.livejournal.com/23399.html