Looking for a Makefile alternative

Today I want to showcase a tool that I wish I had discovered years ago: SCons. Knowing that it has been around for more than a decade, I’m honestly furious I never heard about it sooner than a few months ago, but since I did a lot of my work became simpler by a order of magnitude.

Although my experience consists mostly of small academic implementations and research, from time to time I got my hands on a bigger project. In those cases I inevitably had to consider how to manage and build it, often with less than ideal results.