Summary and Setup

SCons is a tool which can run commands to read files, process these files in some way, and write out the processed files. For example, in software development, SCons is used to compile source code into executable programs or libraries, but SCons can also be used to:

  • run analysis scripts on raw data files to get data files that summarize the raw data;
  • run visualization scripts on data files to produce plots; and to
  • parse and combine text files and plots to create papers.

SCons is called a build tool - it builds data files, plots, papers, programs or libraries. It can also update existing files if desired.

SCons tracks the dependencies between the files it creates and the files used to create these. If one of the original files (e.g. a data file) is changed, then SCons knows to recreate, or update, the files that depend upon this file (e.g. a plot).

There are now many build tools available, all of which are based on the same concepts as SCons.

Prerequisites

In this lesson we use scons from the Unix Shell. Some previous experience with using the shell to list directories, create, copy, remove and list files and directories, and run simple scripts is necessary.

SCons uses Python as the configuration language. A working knowledge of Python basics is helpful.

Setup

In order to follow this lesson, you will need to download some files. Please follow instructions on the setup page.

Files

You need to download some files to follow this lesson:

  1. Download scons-lesson.zip.

  2. Move scons-lesson.zip into a directory which you can access via your bash shell.

  3. Open a Bash shell window.

  4. Navigate to the directory where you downloaded the file.

  5. Unpack scons-lesson.zip:

$ unzip scons-lesson.zip
  1. Change into the scons-lesson directory:
$ cd scons-lesson

Software

You also need to have the following software installed on your computer to follow this lesson. The recommended approach is to create a Conda virtual environment for this lesson.

$ conda create --name scons-lesson python scons numpy matplotlib
$ conda activate scons-lesson

SCons

SCons can be installed with the pip or Conda package managers.

Python

Python3, Numpy, and Matplotlib are required. They can be installed separately, but the easiest approach is to install Anaconda which includes all of the necessary python software.