SCons 0.95 supports Visual Studio 2003, Borland tools, "D"

SCons release 0.95, the sixth SCons beta release, is now available for download. SCons is a software construction tool (build tool, or substitute for Make) implemented in Python, based on the winning design in the Software Carpentry build tool competition (in turn based on the Cons build tool). This release most notably adds support for Microsoft Visual Studio 2003, Borland tools, and the "D" programming language.

IMPORTANT: Release 0.95 contains the following interface changes:
- The default behavior of the Zip() Builder is now to create a compressed file.
- The "overrides" keyword argument when creating a Builder() has been deprecated in favor of specifying the values directly with keyword arguments.
- The meaning of the "mode" keyword argument values to the SCons.Util.scons_subst() and SCons.Util.scons_subst_list() functions have been changed. (These are internal functions and should have no external effect, but we list them here for completeness.)

This release adds the following features:
- Microsoft Visual Studio 2003 (version 7.1) is now supported.
- The bcc32, ilink32 and tlib Borland tools are now supported.
- The Digital Mars "D" programming language is now supported.
- A new $MSVS_USE_MFC_DIRS construction variable controls whether the Microsoft Visual Studio ATL and MFC directories are included in the default INCLUDE and LIB paths.
- New AppendUnique() and PrependUnique() Environment methods add values (flags) to construction variables only if they're not already present.
- New "rsrcpath" and "rsrcdir" attributes to the $TARGET, $TARGETS, $SOURCE and $SOURCES construction variables allow Builder commands to access Repository source directories when using a Builder.
- A new --debug=count option displays the numbers of various types of internal objects created, when run under Python 2.1 or later.
- A new --debug=objects option dumps information about SCons internal objects when run under Python 2.1 or later.
- A new --debug=memory option displays memory usage statistics when run under Linux systems.
- A new ZIPCOMPRESSION construction variable controls whether the internal Python action for the Zip Builder compresses the file or not. The default value is zipfile.ZIP_DEFLATED, which generates a compressed file.
- A new "toolpath" Tool() and Environment keyword allows Tool modules to be searched for in specified local directories.

The following bug fixes have been added:
- SCons now gracefully handles non-string construction variables in all known situations.
- Construction variables may now be recursively expanded (e.g. CCFLAGS = "$CCFLAGS -g") without going into an infinite loop.
- Compile the moc_.cc Qt files using the correct environment flags, not those from the environment that first had Qt Builders attached.
- Expansions like ${TARGET.dir} now work properly in PATH construction variables (like CPPPATH, F77PATH, etc.).
- Qt support now works from a copied construction environment.
- The M4 Builder now changes correctly to a Repository directory when the source file is in the source directory of a BuildDir.
- Automatic checkout of implicit dependency files from SCCS and RCS has been fixed.
- Builder-specific override values are now always used in substitutions, not just when there isn't a target-specific environment.
- SCons now properly checks for whether all of the objects going into a SharedLibrary() are shared, even if the object was already built.
- SCons now correctly looks up a Win32 drive letter with no path ('C:') as a directory.
- Specifying .class files as input to JavaH with the .class suffix when they weren't generated using the Java Builder has been fixed.
- The env.Action() method now returns the correct type of Action for its argument(s).
- The Configure() function now works when called from nested subsidiary SConscript files more than one level deep.
- Error message spellings have been corrected from "non-existant" to "non-existent."
- The EnsureSConsVersion() function now checks against the SCons version, not the Python version, for all Python version.
- SCons now properly handles command-line arguments with multiple = in them.
- SCons now correctly retrieves all files from cache when multiple files would ordinarily be built by in a single Action.
- Use of a custom _concat() function in the construction environment when calling _stripixes() has been fixed.
- The Fortran scanner is now case-insensitive for the INCLUDE string (per the Fortan spec).
- Side-effect targets are now properly removed before building their corresponding target.
- BuildDir() can, once again, be called multiple times with the same target and source directory arguments.
- Output lines now stay (more nearly) together when -j is used.
- A bug in saving and restoring PackageOptions to a file has been fixed.
- Microsoft Visual Studio type libraries are now built in the target directory, not the source directory.
- Generated Microsoft Visual Studio project files now re-invoke SCons correctly regardless of whether the file was built via scons.bat or scons.py.
- Evaluate $MSVSPROJECTSUFFIX and $MSVSSOLUTIONSUFFIX when the Builder is invoked, not when the tool is initialized.
- A typo has been fixed in the Microsoft Visual C registry lookup ("VCComponents.dat", not "VSComponents.dat").
- When using Microsoft Visual C++, SCons now uses independently configured "include," "lib" or "path" from the registry. Previously, SCons would only use the values if all three were set in the registry.
- SCons now ignore any "6.1" version of Microsoft Visual C++ found in the registry; this is apparently a phony version number (created by later service packs?) that throws off the logic if the user had any non-default paths configured.
- SCons now uses the Microsoft Visual C++ 6.0 paths by default if the "msvc" Tool is specified but no version of MSVC is detected on disk.

The following miscellaneous improvements have been added:
- All *FLAGS variables now "do the right thing" (as much as possible) when appending flags with either strings or lists of flags.
- The -H help text now lists the legal --debug values.
- SCons now supplies an error message if you try to configure a BuildDir for a directory that already has one.
- The error message when a source file can't be found has been reworded to make it more clear.
- SCons now supplies a useful error message, not a stack trace, if a construction variable expansion contains a syntax error.
- SCons now supplies meaningful error messages, not stack traces, if a non-Node is added as a source, dependency, or ignored dependency of a Node.
- The $LIBS construction variable can now contain File nodes, and can now be a single string or File node, not a list, when only one library is needed.
- When scanning for libraries to link with, SCons no longer appends $LIBPREFIXES or $LIBSUFFIXES values to the $LIBS values if they're already present.
- SCons now allows a target that can have its Builder called multiple times to be called through multiple environments without error, so long as the Builder calls all use the same action.
- The message about ignoring a missing SConscript file is now a suppressable Warning, not a hard-coded sys.stderr.write().
- On POSIX systems with the "env" command, spawn commands with the more portable "env -" idiom, instead of "env -i".
- Improve Cygwin support by accomodating Cygwin Python's delusion that it's running on a case-sensitive file system.
- Microsoft Visual Studio .NET and Visual C 6.0/7.0 path detection has been updated and made more robust.

Memory utilization has been improved as follows:
- "Build" construction environments with overrides are now only generated as needed, not for every target.
- Nodes now delete their build environments after they've been built.

The documentation has been improved:
- The User's Guide now has an appendix describing how to accomplish various common tasks in Python.
- Mention of the still-unimplemented -e option has been removed.
- A man page typo of "JAVACHDIR" instead of "JARCHDIR" has been fixed.
- An undocumented "for_signature" argument in the call() example of the "Variable Substitution" section has now been documented.
- An odd double-quote escape sequence in the man page has been fixed.
- The dbm_module argument to the SConsignFile() function has been documented.