[Scons-users] SCons popularity

[Dirk Bächle]

Hi Paweł,

thanks a lot for your question(s), sorry that I can address them only now...but I was away for some (holiday) time. ;)

On 04.06.2015 14:02, Paweł Tomulik wrote:
> Hi,
>
> I am using SCons for a few years for and for a few reasons:
>
> - it's extensible (Tools) and flexible,
> - build scripts expressed in a civilized and powerful language,
> - dependencies handled correctly even in parallel builds and without
> additional developer's effort,
> - it's free and open source :)
>
> Generally it has a powerful core and it would deserve for a great
> interest, but it's missing few crucial features that make it rather
> unpopular. It looks like open source developers and package maintainers
> are being instructed to strive away from using SCons, see for example:
>
> - https://wiki.debian.org/UpstreamGuide (section called "SCons"),
> -
> https://wiki.gentoo.org/wiki/SCons#Why_you_should_NOT_use_SCons_in_your_project.
>
> My question is: are the SCons developers going to address these issues?
> I've seen efforts regarding versioned shared libraries, hope it's going
> well. There are no easy ways (an no plans?), however, to support
> "standard" installation targets. So, any plans to make it better with
> this regard?
>

You are basically right, there is no visible and concentrated effort planned at the moment to make this all "better". I can only 
speak for myself here, because I *do* have a very clear vision of which steps should be involved to let SCons stand out from the 
crowd...or be at par, at least.

The current switching of the core sources to using "slots" is a part of this, as well as the special "subprocess" wrapper that we'll 
integrate next. Combined with destroying the rumours about SCons being slow (http://www.scons.org/wiki/WhySConsIsNotSlow , yes I 
know the wiki doesn't work :) ) this should give some leverage to gain more avid users.
Other current steps in this direction are:

- Released "fastcpp" Tool for speedup of large, flat CPP builds. https://bitbucket.org/dirkbaechle/scons_fastcpp
- Started a CMake to SCons converter (such that one can better compare real-life projects, regarding runtimes). 
https://bitbucket.org/dirkbaechle/cmake2scons
- Started a special "autotools" wrapper Tools, supporting things like DESTDIR and BINDIR for example. (Not available yet)

Especially for the last item, I'm trying to wrap one of my own open-source projects into SCons...but "automake" style, including 
installing and packaging.
If anyone is interested in this kind of work, please put your finger up...and chime in. Because there's only so much that a single 
man (me, and the other core devs) can do. ;)

Best regards,

Dirk