SCons is a software construction tool (build tool substitute for Make) implemented in Python. It features a modular build engine that can be embedded in other software. SCons configuration files are Python scripts that call the build engine API. It can scan files to detect dependencies automatically and maintain a global view of all dependencies in a build tree, and uses MD5 signatures to detect changed file contents reliably. Timestamps can be used if you prefer. SCons also supports parallel builds and is easily extensible through user-defined builder and scanner objects.