Re: cons 2.3.1 release?

[Steven Knight]

> Last time I checked, scons was far behind in terms of features. I'm using
> cons in a production environement, and I need some of it's advanced
> features. It's not the right time to switch to scons yet.

Just as an update: SCons is actually getting pretty close to Cons in
terms of supported underlying build functionality.  Here are the major
things where SCons still has some catching up to do:

    --  No Repository support.

    --  No UseCache support.

    --  No SIGNATURE configurability.

    --  Info for debugging your build (options, etc.)

    --  Error messages are sketchy; you're just as likely to get
        a Python exception and stack trace when an SConscript
        file is in error

We're also going through some minor late-alpha tweaks of various
interfaces to make some things easier to use, as feedback from the user
community has grown.  But the other Cons functionality that people
rely on is there, most importantly including Link, renamed BuildDir in
SCons.  (Actually, the BuildDir() functionality supports object-only
build directory by allowing you to specify as an option whether or not
you want the source files duplicated in the build directory--the Cons
behavior--or used in-place from the source directory.)

The overall stability of SCons is good.  We've been very disciplined
about adding automated tests as we develop.  There are now 156 test
scripts, and lines of test code actually outnumber lines of product code
two-to-one.

The current plan is to solidify the interfaces enough to declare SCons
beta some time in the next month or two.  I'll cc: an announcement to
the cons-discuss list when that happens.

        --SK