Bundling an scons based source.

Question

We are using SCons for all our build need, and we would like to distribute a library in open source.

Now most softwares uses ./configure, make and make install as build mechanism, we were wondering how we should bundle our library.

We have the following solutions:

• Just bundle like the way it is, requiring scons to build.
• Add a dummy configure and makefile that just call scons.
• Add autoconf and a makefile.

How it is perceived to get a software requiring python and scons to build?

Answer 1

I think it depends largely on your target audience (ie, users who can easily install scons if they don't have it, or ones who can't), but if you are distributing source at all then presumably your users are happy compiling things, and they can install scons too (and python if for some obscene reason they don't have it already)

Also, if you are worried about people not being able to build it, you should probably be distributing a binary package anyway.

Answer 2

If your library is cross-platform and can be compiled on Windows too, then using scons is the right choice.

Answer 3

Another option would be to include the scons-local version in the package. This reduces the dependencies to just python.