SCons - Headers/Libraries in a non-standard location

I'm trying to use SCons to compile a program that requires a set of dependencies which I've installed in a non-standard location.

I've installed the dependencies in /home/dja/ocr. Now I'm trying to compile the main program and can't figure out how to tell SCons where to look for the libraries and headers.

I've tried (amongst others):

scons prefix=/home/dja/ocr

scons includepath=/home/dja/ocr/include libpath=/home/dja/ocr/lib

env LIBPATH=/home/dja/ocr/lib INCLUDEPATH=/home/dja/ocr/include scons

...etc...

The results are always the same:

scons: Reading SConscript files ...  
Currently supported OS version: Ubuntu 10.04  
Checking for C++ library iulib... no  
AssertionError: :  
  File "/home/dja/ocr/src/ocropus/SConstruct", line 107:  
    assert conf.CheckLibWithHeader("iulib","iulib/iulib.h","C++");

I haven't been able to find an answer on Google.

What is the correct SCons foo to get this to work?

Solution

Unlike with make and its conventions for certain environment variables or the --with-X options to configure, the author of the SConstruct needs to provide a way for a user to specify overrides. By default, scons doesn't read build variables from the environment.

There are various ways of handling user configuration (see Variables which I just learned about), but I'm not aware of widely honored conventions. And for the user in your position, you need to rely on the author writing build documentation or a decent scons --help description, or resort to reading the SConstruct yourself (which you sometimes have to resort to with ~~badly written~~ unconventional Makefiles).

BTW, I would be happy to be corrected on this if my knowledge of scons is out of date.