Editing SCons (section)

== Features ==
Major features include:
* Configuration files are Python; user-written builds can leverage a general-purpose, cross-platform programming language
* [[coupling (computer programming)|Dependency]] analysis for [[C (programming language)|C]], [[C++]] and [[Fortran]]
* Dependency analysis is extensible through user-defined scanners for other languages or file types; unlike [[GNU Compiler Collection]] (GCC) dependency analysis, SCons uses a [[regular expression]] scan for included source files
* Built-in support for C, C++, [[D (programming language)|D]], [[Java (programming language)|Java]], [[Fortran]], [[Objective-C]], [[Yacc]], [[Lex (software)|Lex]], [[Qt (framework)|Qt]] and [[SWIG]], as well as [[TeX]] and [[LaTeX]] documents
* Support for other languages via custom builders
* Building from central repositories of source code and pre-built targets
* Ability to use [[Microsoft Visual Studio|Visual Studio]], including the generation of {{Not a typo|.dsp}}, {{Not a typo|.dsw}}, {{Not a typo|.sln}} and {{Not a typo|.vcproj}} files
* Detection of file content changes using [[MD5]] signatures; optional, configurable ability to use traditional timestamps
* Ability to do parallel builds, maintaining a specified number of jobs running simultaneously regardless of directory hierarchy
* Autoconf-like support for finding #include files, libraries, functions and [[typedef]]s
* Global view of dependencies, so multiple build passes or reordering targets is not required.
* Ability to share built files in a cache to speed up multiple builds - like [[ccache]] but for any type of target file, not just C/C++ compilation
* Designed from the ground up for cross-platform builds; known to work on [[POSIX]] systems (including [[Linux]], [[IBM AIX|AIX]] and [[OS/2]], [[Berkeley Software Distribution|*BSD Unices]], [[HP-UX]], [[Silicon Graphics|SGI]] [[IRIX]], [[Solaris (operating system)|Solaris]], [[illumos]]), [[Windows NT]], [[OS X]]