ANNOUNCE: SCons 0.98.1 (candidate for 1.0) is now available

Version 0.98.1 of SCons has been released and is now available at the
SCons download page:

        http://www.scons.org/download.php

RPM and Debian packages and a Win32 installer are all available, in
addition to the traditional .tar.gz and .zip files.

This release is considered a candidate for the (long-awaited) official
1.0 SCons release.  We welcome and encourage widespread testing and use
of this release to try to identify any problems.  Please report your bugs
following the guidelines at:

        http://scons.tigris.org/bug-submission.html


WHAT'S NEW IN THIS RELEASE

IMPORTANT:  Like its predecessor, this release officially deprecates
support for Python versions prior to 2.2 (that is, Python 1.5.2, 2.0
and 2.1).  SCons will function normally, but running SCons under any
deprecated Python version will generate a disableable warning message.
Our current plan is to support these deprecated Python versions in
SCons 1.0, and remove support in SCons 2.0.  If removing this support
would cause a problem for you, please contact the [email protected]
mailing list.

This release notably contains:  1) a fix for a serious performance
problem with sizable Java projects; 2) a significant refactoring of the
Fortran support

For a complete list of changes since the previous major release, see
the official change log:

        http://www.scons.org/CHANGES.txt

Here is a summary of the changes since the most recent 0.98.0 release:

NEW FUNCTIONALITY

- New sunf77, sunf90 and sunf95 Tool modules provide support for
  Sun Fortran compilers on Solaris.
- Fortran file suffixes are now configurable through new $F77FILESUFIXES,
  $F90FILESUFIXES, $F95FILESUFIXES and $FORTRANFILESUFFIXES variables.
- A new Variables object has been added as a first step towards
  deprecating the Options object in the future.
- A new variables= keyword argument to Environment() creation has been
  added as a first step towards deprecating the options= keyword argument.
- The GDC 'D' language compiler is now supported.

CHANGED/ENHANCED EXISTING FUNCTIONALITY

- SCons now links Fortran-compiled object files with the utility
  specified in the $FORTRAN construction variable.
- Fortran compilers on Linux (the Intel, g77 and gfortran compilers)
  now add the -fPIC option by default when compiling shared object files.
- SCons now prefers gfortran to g77 when compiling Fortran.
- The -d, -e, -w and --n-print-directory options are now officially
  "Ignored for compatibility" and will not be implemented.
- Defining $CXXFLAGS no longer causes $CCFLAGS to be removed from
  the default C++ compilation line.
- Passing a list of variable names to the Return() function now works as
  documented.

FIXES

- The scons.bat file on Windows now correctly finds the Python
  executable even if it is installed in the Scripts/ subdirectory.
- The behavior of the -u, -U and -D options with the new --interactive
  mode when a VariantDir() is being used has been fixed.
- Listing a source file twice no longer causes repeated rebuilds.
- The --debug=stree no longer prints its tree twice.
- The LoadableModule() builder now works correctly under MingW.
- Various missing (but documented) Fortran-related construction
  variables have been added.
- Using the -python flag when building SWIG projects in a subdirectory no
  longer causes repeated rebuilds.

IMPROVEMENTS

- Building large Java projects has been significantly sped up.
- Checking for missing source files when a Builder creates multiple
  target files from multiple source files has been significantly sped up.
- The SCons.Util.to_string*() functions have been sped up.
- Node initialization and related calculations have been sped up.
- Scanning code has been improved.
- The dependency graph walk and dependency-cycle checking have been
  optimized.
- Coe that

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

Thanks to Benoit Belley, Johan Boul?, David Cournapeau, Anatoly Techtonik,
Mike Wake and Matthew Wesley for their contributions to this release.