ANNOUNCE: SCons 0.01 now available

[Steven Knight]

I'm pleased to announce that the first alpha release of SCons, version
0.01, has been released and is available for download.  You can download
SCons from the download page at the SCons web site:

        http://www.scons.org/

Or through the download link at the SCons project page at SourceForge:

        http://sourceforge.net/projects/scons/

RPM and Debian packages and a Win32 installer are all available, in
addition to the traditional .tar.gz files.

SCons is a software construction tool (build tool, make tool) written in
Python.  Its design is based on the ScCons design which won the Software
Carpentry build tool design competition in August 2000, which is in turn
based on the design of the Perl-based Cons build tool.

Distinctive features of SCons include:

  - configuration files are Python scripts, allowing the full use of a
    real scripting language to solve build problems
  - a modular architecture allows the SCons Build Engine to be
    embedded in other Python software
  - a global view of all dependencies; no multiple passes to get
    everything built
  - the ability to scan files for implicit dependencies (#include files);
  - improved parallel build (-j) support
  - use of MD5 signatures to decide if a file has changed
  - easily extensible through user-defined Builder and Scanner objects

This alpha release has been a long time coming (we initially hoped to
release in September), but the tradeoff is that the extra time has
allowed us to provide more functionality than just a toy.  Owing to a
rigorous testing methodology that we've followed throughout development,
we believe the quality and functionality in SCons 0.01 to be sufficient
to support "real work" from day one.

That said, this *is* an alpha release, and we fully expect that some
of you will exercise end cases that our current tests don't cover.  We
eagerly await your bug reports.

An scons-users mailing list has been created for those interested in
getting started using SCons.  You can subscribe at:

        http://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/scons-users

Lastly, I'd like to acknowledge the entire SCons team, who have put in
many hours contributing ingenious solutions to a thorny set of problems:
Chad Austin, Charles Crain, Steven Leblanc, and Anthony Roach.

We're anxious for your feedback, so don't be shy about letting us know
what's good, what's not, and how SCons can be improved to help you solve
your build problems.

On behalf of the SCons team,

        --SK