Can SCons download files on its own?

Question

I'm researching SCons options for downloading external dependencies and I'm rather new to it. So, is there a way to download files required during the build from the network, or will I have to just write that in Python?

Thanks.

Answer 1

Yeah, downloading files you can implement only with python. With scons you can make special Action (which call you python implementation of downloading files) and set Depends to other targets/sources. But it's seems too difficult to check depends of network files. I recommend you to split it to 2 tasks. First - check files and build, second - downloading files.

if not CheckNetworkFiles() :
    print "Network files not found, run: scons download_network_files to correct it."
    Exit(1)
// else continue build

...
if "download_network_files" in COMMAND_LINE_TARGETS:
    Exit( downloadNetworkFiles() ) // python code for downloading files