Pcons: new software build tool in Python, inspired by SCons and CMake

I've been really gratified to see a bit of uptake of pcons in the open-source community, so I thought I'd post an update since it's up to v0.14.1 now. Pcons is a new open-source build tool that's the best of SCons and CMake with fewer of their problems.Since v0.7 (last HN post), there's now a porting guide, LaTeX toolchain, full C++20 module support, Fortran toolchain (including MODULE/USE), WebAssembly via WASI and EMSDK. It can generate pkg-config files, finds MSVC more reliably, added Ninja restat support for even faster builds, better target.depends(), better logging and debugging, CMake-style template-based config headers and a lot of improvements and fixes. I was one of the original developers of SCons and helped maintain it for years. I love that Python is the configuration language — it makes build descriptions incredibly flexible. But over time, working with CMake on other projects, I came to appreciate things SCons doesn't do as well: the separation between describing a build and executing it, transitive dependency propagation, package manager integration, and modern python semantics. I'd been thinking about a fresh start for years but never had the time. Recently, working collaboratively with Claude Code, it finally became feasible. So, meet pcons. You can use it as uvx pcons for true zero-install (great for other open source projects). There's a comparison with other common build tools here:github.com/DarkStarSystems/pcons/blob/main/COMPARISONS.md — corrections and updates appreciated! Major features as of v0.14.1: • Toolchains for GCC, LLVM/Clang, MSVC, and clang-cl with auto-detection, LaTeX, gfortran, WebAssembly etc. • Generators for Ninja, Makefile, Xcode, compile_commands.json, and Mermaid/DOT dependency diagrams • Can create installers: msix on Windows, pkg/dmg on Mac, tgz on Linux • Package management via pkg-config, Conan 2.x, and a pcons-fetch tool for building dependencies from source • Compiler cache support (ccache/sccache), semantic presets (warnings, sanitizers, LTO, hardening), cross-compilation presets (Android NDK, iOS, WebAssembly) • Platform-specific helpers: macOS bundles/frameworks/.pkg/.dmg, Windows manifests/MSIX, and an msvcup module for installing MSVC without Visual Studio • An extensible module/add-on system for domain-specific tasks • Debug tracing (--debug=resolve,subst) with source-location tracking on every node • Plenty of examples included, unit tests for all features, tested on Mac, Windows and Linux It's under active development — ready for experimentation, but it's quite stable — enough for light production. I'd love bug reports, feedback on the API design and what you'd want from a modern Python-based software build system. I take my tools seriously and intend to support it well, so please try it out! Open source, MIT licensed. GitHub:github.com/DarkStarSystems/pcons | Docs: pcons.readthedocs.io | PyPI: uvx pcons or pip install pcons