How does scons fair in terms of pulling in other libraries? I have used Autotools and using anything from there that doesn't have pkg-config support (like boost, opengl etc) is a nightmare.

-----Original Message----- From: Jon Stewart [mailto:stew1@ellipsis.cx] Sent: 13 September 2005 17:30 To: boost-users@lists.boost.org Subject: Re: [Boost-users] Scons users?

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On the Boost.Build list we were just discussing the fact that some people otherwise inclined towards Boost have chosen Scons over Boost.Build. It would be useful for us to understand some of the reasons why, if some of you wouldn't mind letting us know. No flames, please!

I have been using Scons more for tiny projects* than for large ones, and I am still somewhat ignorant about Boost.Build, so I can't give a fair comparison. But people aren't fair, so I think the data points are still valid:

1. Scons is a nice framework embedded in a general purpose programming language. So, you get the benefit of a DSL that does 80% of the job very nicely, but you've got all that is Python for the 20% that doesn't fit -- and the two parts integrate naturally. I moved from Ant to Scons and liked that Scons provided lots of high-level functionality but didn't straightjacket me into abstractions that didn't fit my situation.

2. My standard SConstruct file is 4 lines (2 imports, 2 statements). I get a full dependency analysis, can make full use of ccache and distcc, and run my unit tests after the build. I can't imagine life being better. :-)

3. Boost.Build started out life as a fork (right?), and I haven't noticed many other projects outside of Boost using it. Scons seems to have more "momentum".

4. Boost.Build docs don't/didn't offer the trivial example of how to get "Hello, World" to build. Compare:

http://www.boost.org/tools/build/v1/build_system.htm#getting_started

with:

http://www.scons.org/doc/HTML/scons-user.html#AEN239

5. A fair amount of traffic on this list seems to be from people who have trouble with Boost.Build. Of course, I'm not subscribed to the scons users list so this isn't fair, but my perception was that Boost.Build would have a steeper learning curve.

I'm sure Boost.Build is a powerful system and can do the job... it just seemed to require more thought to get running the first time, and I wanted to devote my thought to writing code.

Hope this helps,

Jon

* The majority of my tiny projects are stub programs to play around with all the other Boost libraries! :-) -- Jon Stewart stew1@ellipsis.cx _______________________________________________ Boost-users mailing list Boost-users@lists.boost.org http://lists.boost.org/mailman/listinfo.cgi/boost-users