scons_gd/scons/doc/design/acks.xml

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<chapter id="chap-acks"
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<title>Acknowledgements</title>

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 <para>

   I'm grateful to the following people
   for their influence, knowing or not,
   on the design of &SCons;:

 </para>

 <variablelist>
  <varlistentry>
   <term>Bob Sidebotham</term>
   <listitem>
     <para>

     First, as the original author of &Cons;, Bob did the real heavy
     lifting of creating the underlying model for dependency management
     and software construction, as well as implementing it in Perl.
     During the first years of &Cons;' existence, Bob did a skillful
     job of integrating input and code from the first users, and
     consequently is a source of practical wisdom and insight into the
     problems of real-world software construction.  His continuing
     advice has been invaluable.

     </para>
   </listitem>
  </varlistentry>

  <varlistentry>
   <term>The &SCons; Development Team</term>
   <listitem>
     <para>

     A big round of thanks go to those brave souls who have
     gotten in on the ground floor:
     David Abrahams,
     Charles Crain,
     Steven Leblanc.
     Anthony Roach,
     and
     Steven Shaw.
     Their contributions,
     through their general knowledge of software build issues in general
     Python in particular,
     have made &SCons; what it is today.

     </para>
   </listitem>
  </varlistentry>

  <varlistentry>
   <term>The &Cons; Community</term>
   <listitem>
     <para>

     The real-world build problems that the users of &Cons;
     share on the <command>cons-discuss</command> mailing list
     have informed much of the thinking that
     has gone into the &SCons; design.
     In particular,
     Rajesh Vaidheeswarran,
     the current maintainer of &Cons;,
     has been a very steady influence.
     I've also picked up valuable insight from
     mailing-list participants
     Johan Holmberg,
     Damien Neil,
     Gary Oberbrunner,
     Wayne Scott,
     and Greg Spencer.

     </para>
   </listitem>
  </varlistentry>

  <varlistentry>
   <term>Peter Miller</term>
   <listitem>

     <para>

     Peter has indirectly
     influenced two aspects of the &SCons; design:

     </para>

     <para>

     Miller's influential paper
     <citetitle>Recursive Make Considered Harmful</citetitle>
     was what led me, indirectly, to my involvement with &Cons;
     in the first place.
     Experimenting with the single-Makefile approach he describes in
     <citetitle>RMCH</citetitle> led me to conclude that while it worked
     as advertised, it was not an extensible scheme.  This solidified
     my frustration with Make and led me to try &Cons;, which at its
     core shares the single-process, universal-DAG model of the "RMCH"
     single-Makefile technique.

     </para>

     <para>

     The testing framework that Miller created for his
     Aegis change management system
     changed the way I approach software development
     by providing a framework for rigorous, repeatable
     testing during development.
     It was my success at using Aegis for personal projects
     that led me to begin my involvement with &Cons;
     by creating the <command>cons-test</command> regression suite.

     </para>
   </listitem>
  </varlistentry>

  <varlistentry>
   <term>Stuart Stanley</term>
   <listitem>
     <para>

     An experienced Python programmer,
     Stuart provided valuable advice and insight
     into some of the more useful Python idioms at my disposal
     during the original <literal>ScCons</literal>; design
     for the Software Carpentry contest.

     </para>
   </listitem>
  </varlistentry>

  <varlistentry>
   <term>Gary Holt</term>
   <listitem>
     <para>

     I don't know which came first,
     the first-round Software Carpentry contest entry
     or the tool itself,
     but Gary's design for &Makepp;
     showed me that it is possible to marry
     the strengths of &Cons;-like dependency management
     with backwards compatibility for &Makefile;s.
     Striving to support both
     &Makefile; compatibility and
     a native Python interface
     cleaned up the &SCons; design immeasurably
     by factoring out the common elements
     into the Build Engine.

     </para>
   </listitem>
  </varlistentry>
 </variablelist>


</chapter>