[Scons-users] Scons none-deterministic behavior for incremental build

[Bill Deegan]

I'd say if you're handed a poorly implemented build system in SCons it can
be fairly hard to unravel any issue you run into.
And that such a situation is likely true regardless of the build system
used.
Though of course it will be slightly easier if you're already familiar with
the build system used to unravel issues.

Now if you're handed a well implemented build system in any build system,
once again making changes to such is going to have a level of difficulty
based on your familiarity with said build system.

The main problem I see with build systems implemented in SCons is that the
creators of such build systems rarely take the time to understand how SCons
is different from other build systems and how to best use SCons.
Likely some improved documentation could help here.
But 9 times out of 10 when I try to help said users and ask if they've read
the documents... they haven't.. or they didn't understand them and didn't
come to the community to ask for clarification.  Only coming with their
misunderstanding of how SCons works to ask for help. Often asking how to
make SCons function the way they think it functions, which of course since
that understanding is often flawed is an impossible ask.
(Of course this is not unique to SCons and happens with most software)

Instead they often mash up build system logic with python overusing python
instead of using it to simplify creating a build system.
They see a hammer (python) and use it.
They try to for build order rather than specifying dependencies using
builders,scanners, emitters, etc.
Of course the learning curve for such is a bit higher than make, but it's
easier to make a correct build system once you understand such.
And in many cases the stock builders are sufficient.

Regardless we're (the community) is here to help people resolve those
issues..



On Wed, Dec 5, 2018 at 11:27 AM Mats Wichmann <mats at wichmann.us> wrote:

> On 12/5/18 8:34 AM, Bill Deegan wrote:
> > Indeed getting a complicated build to work with any build system is
> > non-trivial.
> >
> > -Bill
>
> I don't want to wander too far off into philosophical arguments (oh, who
> am I kidding!), so I'll drop this thread after making this observation:
> as a user who wandered over here after not being clear how to
> disentangle problems in a built that had chosen scons, it seems to me
> way too easy to get things wrong in scons. With great flexibility comes
> great opportunities to mess up. Or something like that :)
>
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