SCons API Documentation

SCons API Documentation#

Attention

This is the internal API Documentation for SCons. It is generated automatically from code docstrings using the Sphinx documentation generator, and covers much more than the Public API. If you were looking for the Public API - the interfaces that have long-term consistency guarantees, which you can reliably use when writing a build system for a project - see the SCons Reference Manual. Note that what is Public API and what is not is often not clearly delineated in these API Docs.

The target audience is developers contributing to SCons itself, and those writing external Tools, Builders, and other related functionality for their project, who may need to reach beyond the Public API to accomplish their tasks. Reaching into internals is fine, but comes with the usual risks of “things here could change, it’s up to you to keep your code working”.

Any missing/incomplete information is due to shortcomings in the docstrings in the code. Without being flippant, filling in all the docstrings has not always been a priority across the two-plus decades SCons has been in existence. Contributions improving the docstring front are welcome. It is often useful when making some larger change to fill in docstrings and suitable type annotations in the code being modified, “leaving the world a better place”, as it were.

Note that the Sphinx configuration is limited, still a work in progress. SCons classes which inherit from Python standard library classes (e.g. UserList, UserDict, UserString), may be allowed to show inherited mmembers; the Python standard library occasionally has little to no helpful docstring information. Inherited interfaces from outside SCons code can be identified by the lack of a [source] button to the right of the method signature. Such classes should be evaluated case-by-case and possibly switched to not show inherited members, depending on which way seems to provide the more useful result.

Contents:

Indices and Tables#

Contents