First, as the original author of Cons, Bob did the real heavy lifting of creating the underlying model for dependency management and software construction, as well as implementing it in Perl. During the first years of Cons' existence, Bob did a skillful job of integrating input and code from the first users, and consequently is a source of practical wisdom and insight into the problems of real-world software construction. His continuing advice has been invaluable.

A big round of thanks go to those brave souls who have gotten in on the ground floor: David Abrahams, Charles Crain, Steven Leblanc. Anthony Roach, and Steven Shaw. Their contributions, through their general knowledge of software build issues in general Python in particular, have made SCons what it is today.

The real-world build problems that the users of Cons share on the cons-discuss mailing list have informed much of the thinking that has gone into the SCons design. In particular, Rajesh Vaidheeswarran, the current maintainer of Cons, has been a very steady influence. I've also picked up valuable insight from mailing-list participants Johan Holmberg, Damien Neil, Gary Oberbrunner, Wayne Scott, and Greg Spencer.

Peter has indirectly influenced two aspects of the SCons design:

Miller's influential paper Recursive Make Considered Harmful was what led me, indirectly, to my involvement with Cons in the first place. Experimenting with the single-Makefile approach he describes in RMCH led me to conclude that while it worked as advertised, it was not an extensible scheme. This solidified my frustration with Make and led me to try Cons, which at its core shares the single-process, universal-DAG model of the "RMCH" single-Makefile technique.

The testing framework that Miller created for his Aegis change management system changed the way I approach software development by providing a framework for rigorous, repeatable testing during development. It was my success at using Aegis for personal projects that led me to begin my involvement with Cons by creating the cons-test regression suite.

An experienced Python programmer, Stuart provided valuable advice and insight into some of the more useful Python idioms at my disposal during the original ScCons; design for the Software Carpentry contest.

I don't know which came first, the first-round Software Carpentry contest entry or the tool itself, but Gary's design for Make++ showed me that it is possible to marry the strengths of Cons-like dependency management with backwards compatibility for Makefiles. Striving to support both Makefile compatibility and a native Python interface cleaned up the SCons design immeasurably by factoring out the common elements into the Build Engine.