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SCons Reviews & Product Details

SCons Overview

What is SCons?

SCons is an Open Source software construction tool-that is, a next-generation build tool.

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Product Description

SCons is an Open Source software construction tool-that is, a next-generation build tool.


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Recent SCons Reviews

Verified User
U
Verified UserMid-Market (51-1000 emp.)
5.0 out of 5
"SCons Review"
Its so much simpler to use than GNU Make or CMake. Because its Python, it can be broadly adopted and supported by most software engineers.
Oleg L.
OL
Oleg L.Small-Business (50 or fewer emp.)
3.5 out of 5
"quick and slow"
The simplicity of use. Quick onboarding.
Verified User
A
Verified UserMid-Market (51-1000 emp.)
4.0 out of 5
"Scons for efficiently building C/C++"
Its documentation and the fact that it is written in Python
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17 SCons Reviews

4.1 out of 5
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17 SCons Reviews
4.1 out of 5
17 SCons Reviews
4.1 out of 5
G2 reviews are authentic and verified.
Verified User in Food & Beverages
UF
Mid-Market(51-1000 emp.)
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Validated Reviewer
Review source: G2 invite
Incentivized Review
(Original )Information
What do you like best about SCons?

Its so much simpler to use than GNU Make or CMake. Because its Python, it can be broadly adopted and supported by most software engineers. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

What do you dislike about SCons?

The trade-off of its simplicity is that you must refer to the documentation for weird edge cases. Because the documentation is very good, this is seldom an issue. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

What problems is SCons solving and how is that benefiting you?

Building C/C++ software. I love it is Python code which is ubiquitous. Also, running signatures on files ensures change detection and rebuild. Automatic header file dependency tracking is extra work I don't have to do compared to Make. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

Bianca I.
BI
Software Developer
Mid-Market(51-1000 emp.)
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Validated Reviewer
Verified Current User
Review source: G2 invite
Incentivized Review
What do you like best about SCons?

SCons is a very versatile package. Using SCons we're able to configure our environment on different levels easily.

Almost everything is straight-forward and easy to use. Plus, many people are using it which means potential blocking points are easily passed. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

What do you dislike about SCons?

I'd like to have a deeper understanding of the implementation of the package, hence a more detailed documentation will come in handy. I'd like to have a deeper look into what other uses this package could have. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

Recommendations to others considering SCons:

I recommend using this package because it's really useful and a time saver. Also, it is easy to read and configure, from my point of view. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

What problems is SCons solving and how is that benefiting you?

I'm using SCons for building and testing projects developed for automotive industry, mostly written in C. Building means compiling and linking the code. Prebuild and postbuild actions are configured in SCons, too. Also, SCons is used for automated builds in Jenkins. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

Oleg L.
OL
Solutions Architect
Small-Business(50 or fewer emp.)
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Validated Reviewer
Review source: Organic
What do you like best about SCons?

The simplicity of use. Quick onboarding. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

What do you dislike about SCons?

Slow speed of builds. Garbage files when building solution Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

What problems is SCons solving and how is that benefiting you?

Building pet projects. Quickstart for any project. Easy to learn how to build c++ binaries and libs my analyzing command line output. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

Ashish P.
AP
Software Engineer
Mid-Market(51-1000 emp.)
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Validated Reviewer
Review source: G2 invite
Incentivized Review
What do you like best about SCons?

Scons uses OO python because of which it's very easy to create new target build scripts with the provided API. It is also very extendable and can fine tuned for particular use as well if default is not sufficient. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

What do you dislike about SCons?

The dependency graph generated is not that good for a large project which can lead to long compilation times. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

Recommendations to others considering SCons:

It is an efficient and easy to use system with a very powerful programming interface in OO Python. For cross platform build environment SCons is well suited and can be integrated with CI/CD systems easily. However, one might need to tweak the dependency graph features for a large code base. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

What problems is SCons solving and how is that benefiting you?

The problem to solve was create an efficient build system that was easy to use and extend for a large cross platform code base. The benefits are easy OO API that is very customizable and provides parallelism features. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

Albert G.
AG
Small-Business(50 or fewer emp.)
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Validated Reviewer
Review source: G2 invite
Incentivized Review
What do you like best about SCons?

It's design / architecture has the right concepts of a (generic) builder: Target, Dependencies, Nodes, Toolset, Builder, Scanner, Environments, Configure Checks.. and it does it as a Python module, the right language for the task.

That means that any task that you will need to do building your project has already a good concept to represent it and most probably already an implementation of it that does it, and also that you don't need to know any new language/syntax, but just an API/Module of a well-known language that is cross-platform by nature. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

What do you dislike about SCons?

Unfortunately, its community was not as big as its competitors (mainly CMake) and it felt like I was using a much better technology than most of the projects, but that it won't last because for some reason it's not properly known in the industry. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

What problems is SCons solving and how is that benefiting you?

I've used Scons for the whole building + testing of C/C++ projects.

To create the libs and apps, but also the documentation, and even autogenerate, build and run tests.

It helped me a lot to have a single command to run any of those tasks and to do it on Linux, Windows and even for Embedded devices.

It was also fun to create some custom implementation of it's main concepts. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

Tasos P.
TP
Systens Engineer, Software
Mid-Market(51-1000 emp.)
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Validated Reviewer
Review source: G2 invite
Incentivized Review
What do you like best about SCons?

Scons is a build system written in Python, and build scripts are written in Python. This is a good thing as it gives you the debugging flexibility tou can’t find in other build systems. Anybody can use Python so anybody can maintain a Scons build system, in principle.

Scons is amazingly powerful, but it allows you to diverge a lot from its intended use. If you don’t do things the Scons way, you will soon run into trouble.

It is also good in maintaining a correct build, if you use it right. It is easy to create custom commands to automate common tasks. Again, Python is the real power here. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

What do you dislike about SCons?

Scons is very slow. Some vague concepts . Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

Recommendations to others considering SCons:

You might check out other simpler build systems like Fastbuild. Scons is a real automation powerhouse. For simple builds, easier frameworks will work fine. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

What problems is SCons solving and how is that benefiting you?

Easy to set up a build system quickly and debuggability. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

Vadim T.
VT
Senior Software Engineer, Quartz
Small-Business(50 or fewer emp.)
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Validated Reviewer
Review source: G2 invite
Incentivized Review
What do you like best about SCons?

I'd like portability as this build system will work anywhere for you where you can run python interpreter. No other dependency involved except of course you build chain. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

What do you dislike about SCons?

Some errors are about python but they really about wrong use of Scons API. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

Recommendations to others considering SCons:

If you need something that will build your project for any platform which supports python Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

What problems is SCons solving and how is that benefiting you?

We used scons to cross compile android and IOS native library for Android and iPhone mobile apps. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

Verified User in Telecommunications
AT
Mid-Market(51-1000 emp.)
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Validated Reviewer
Review source: G2 invite
Incentivized Review
What do you like best about SCons?

Its documentation and the fact that it is written in Python Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

What do you dislike about SCons?

Logging can be made more elaborate. Would help the first time implementers. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

What problems is SCons solving and how is that benefiting you?

Trying to build faster by making use of the multithreading capacity in scons. The switch has made us achieve CI/CD in our environment in nearly half the time than before. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

Verified User in Automotive
CA
Mid-Market(51-1000 emp.)
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Validated Reviewer
Review source: G2 invite
Incentivized Review
What do you like best about SCons?

I have used scons in one of my project...very easy to use and write your own build system if u are aware of python....very easy and handy tool Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

What do you dislike about SCons?

Nothing as such....i have found it very easy to use. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

What problems is SCons solving and how is that benefiting you?

The best thing is the ease of use.....i highly recommend it Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

Verified User in Computer Software
UC
Enterprise(> 1000 emp.)
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Validated Reviewer
Review source: G2 invite
Incentivized Review
What do you like best about SCons?

It's well thoughtful design, I can debug build script. It utilizes multi core machines easily. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

What do you dislike about SCons?

It's complex, for new users. I didn't find templates for most use cases like in Cmake. It requires some work for even simple project, but the code written well will bring fruits in future. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

Recommendations to others considering SCons:

It's the best build system for new complex project's if you bear in mind the future of product's evolution (add/remove new features, build targets etc) Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

What problems is SCons solving and how is that benefiting you?

In big project, we changed switch on/off software's feature from #defines in c++ to scons.

It's easy to customize build and adapt to particular version of hardware. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.