scons VS Bazel

The most comprehensive make alternative in python I've seen is Scons (https://scons.org/)

It would be worth to see how they tackles some of the challenges you're looking into.

Blurb from the website:

SCons is an Open Source software construction tool. Think of SCons as an improved, cross-platform substitute for the classic Make utility with integrated functionality similar to autoconf/automake and compiler caches such as ccache. In short, SCons is an easier, more reliable and faster way to build software.

SCons never got popular enough to escape the niches it grew up in.

i literally do almost this exact thing with the game im working on. situation is: im the programmer, working with an artist who cant code (and im not going to make them edit json on an ipad lmao) so i have a google drive spreadsheet where they put metadata for the items they make. i have a script that uses rclone to copy this down as a csv, along with the image assets. then i wrote a python extension for scons that converts it to json (and also does some image processing/cropping because evidently procreate's export options are very limited). from here, i originally had an import plugin that would automatically import the json files as godot resources. however, i eventually decided to instead write a standalone script in gdscript (invoked with godot --script --headless myscript.gd) that would do the conversion ahead of import, mainly because i wanted to be able to have the game assets be more self-contained (like, so that an item has its texture in the same resource file instead of in a separate file referenced from the json). i then modified my scons build scripts to call this script.

it's a build tool, like cmake. https://scons.org/ you have to install it.

Wow, if you curl it, there's a lot of boilerplate code there.

Maybe built using Bazel?

https://bazel.build

Bazel by Google

Luckily a feature to limit the disk cache size is in development: https://github.com/bazelbuild/bazel/issues/5139

This is a problem that Bazel (https://bazel.build) solves in a very convenient way. You can just keep using the paths relative to the repository root, and as long as you properly declare your test needs that file it will access it without problems. Or you can use the runfile libraries to access them too.

When doing research for this lab exercise I looked at both vcpkg and conan. Both are package managers that would automate the installation and configuration of my program with its dependencies. However, when it came to releasing and sharing my program my options were limited. For example, the central public registry for conan packages is conan-center, but these packages are curated and the process is very involved. There was no way conan-center would accept a class project like mine. Alternatively, I could host a conan package on a public Artifactory repository, but accessing the package requires users to add the repository to their conan remote. This already sounded like too many steps to expect regular users to follow - I already haven't setup any conan remotes, there's no way I could expect regular users to know about conan remotes, let alone have conan installed on their system. After discussing with people online and consulting my instructor, I ultimately decided to do a GitHub release. However, in the future I was encouraged to look into using CMake or bazel.

NOTE: I won’t mention SBT and Leiningen here because, with all due respect, they are niche build tools. I also won’t discuss Kobalt for the same reason (besides, it’s no longer actively maintained). Additionally, I won’t touch upon Bazel and Buck in this context, mainly because I’m not very familiar with them. If you have insights or comments about these tools, please feel free to share them in the comments 👇

> None of this solves C's only REAL problem (in my opinion) which is the lack of dependency management.

Bazel solves this really nicely, I know some people have strong opinions on it but I cannot recommend it enough

https://bazel.build/