The Build Engine can be embedded in any other software that supports embedding Python: in a GUI, in a wrapper script that interprets classic Makefile syntax, or in any other software that can translate its dependency representation into the appropriate calls to the Build Engine API. describes in detail the specification for a "Native Python" interface that will drive the SCons implementation effort.

When building/updating the objects, the Build Engine operates as a single executable with a complete Directed Acyclic Graph (DAG) of the dependencies in the entire build tree. This is in stark contrast to the commonplace recursive use of Make to handle hierarchical directory-tree builds.

Dependency analysis is carried out via digital signatures (a.k.a. "fingerprints"). Contents of object are examined and reduced to a number that can be stored and compared to see if the object has changed. Additionally, SCons uses the same signature technique on the command-lines that are executed to update an object. If the command-line has changed since the last time, then the object must be rebuilt.

The output of Build Engine is customizable through user-defined functions. This could be used to print additional desired information about what SCons is doing, or tailor output to a specific build analyzer, GUI, or IDE.

SCons detects build failures via the exit status from the tools used to build the target files. By default, a failed exit status (non-zero on UNIX systems) terminates the build with an appropriate error message. An appropriate class from the Python library will interpret build-tool failures via an OS-independent API.

If multiple tasks are executing in a parallel build, and one tool returns failure, SCons will not initiate any further build tasks, but allow the other build tasks to complete before terminating.

A -k command-line option may be used to ignore errors and continue building other targets. In no case will a target that depends on a failed build be rebuilt.