The SourceSignatures function is fairly straightforward, and supports two different argument values to configure whether source file changes should be decided using MD5 signatures:

Program('hello.c')
SourceSignatures('MD5')
      

Or using time stamps:

Program('hello.c')
SourceSignatures('timestamp')
      

These are roughly equivalent to specifying Decider('MD5') or Decider('timestamp-match'), respectively, although it only affects how SCons makes decisions about dependencies on source files--that is, files that are not built from any other files.

The TargetSignatures function specifies how SCons decides when a target file has changed when it is used as a dependency of (input to) another target--that is, the TargetSignatures function configures how the signatures of "intermediate" target files are used when deciding if a "downstream" target file must be rebuilt. ^[2]

The TargetSignatures function supports the same 'MD5' and 'timestamp' argument values that are supported by the SourceSignatures, with the same meanings, but applied to target files. That is, in the example:

Program('hello.c')
TargetSignatures('MD5')
      

The MD5 checksum of the hello.o target file will be used to decide if it has changed since the last time the "downstream" hello target file was built. And in the example:

Program('hello.c')
TargetSignatures('timestamp')
      

The modification time of the hello.o target file will be used to decide if it has changed since the last time the "downstream" hello target file was built.

The TargetSignatures function supports two additional argument values: 'source' and 'build'. The 'source' argument specifies that decisions involving whether target files have changed since a previous build should use the same behavior for the decisions configured for source files (using the SourceSignatures function). So in the example:

Program('hello.c')
TargetSignatures('source')
SourceSignatures('timestamp')
      

All files, both targets and sources, will use modification times when deciding if an input file has changed since the last time a target was built.

Lastly, the 'build' argument specifies that SCons should examine the build status of a target file and always rebuild a "downstream" target if the target file was itself rebuilt, without re-examining the contents or timestamp of the newly-built target file. If the target file was not rebuilt during this scons invocation, then the target file will be examined the same way as configured by the SourceSignature call to decide if it has changed.

This mimics the behavior of build signatures in earlier versions of SCons. A build signature re-combined signatures of all the input files that went into making the target file, so that the target file itself did not need to have its contents read to compute an MD5 signature. This can improve performance for some configurations, but is generally not as effective as using Decider('MD5-timestamp').