2.6. Making the SCons Output Less Verbose

You've already seen how SCons prints some messages about what it's doing, surrounding the actual commands used to build the software:

      C:\>scons
      scons: Reading SConscript files ...
      scons: done reading SConscript files.
      scons: Building targets ...
      cl /Fohello.obj /c hello.c /nologo
      link /nologo /OUT:hello.exe hello.obj
      embedManifestExeCheck(target, source, env)
      scons: done building targets.
   

These messages emphasize the order in which SCons does its work: all of the configuration files (generically referred to as SConscript files) are read and executed first, and only then are the target files built. Among other benefits, these messages help to distinguish between errors that occur while the configuration files are read, and errors that occur while targets are being built.

One drawback, of course, is that these messages clutter the output. Fortunately, they're easily disabled by using the -Q option when invoking SCons:

      C:\>scons -Q
      cl /Fohello.obj /c hello.c /nologo
      link /nologo /OUT:hello.exe hello.obj
      embedManifestExeCheck(target, source, env)
   

Because we want this User's Guide to focus on what SCons is actually doing, we're going to use the -Q option to remove these messages from the output of all the remaining examples in this Guide.