&SCons; has a bewildering array of construction variables for different types of options when building programs. Sometimes you may not know exactly which variable should be used for a particular option. &SCons; construction environments have a &ParseFlags; method that takes a set of typical command-line options and distrbutes them into the appropriate construction variables. Historically, it was created to support the &ParseConfig; method, so it focuses on options used by the GNU Compiler Collection (GCC) for the C and C++ toolchains. &ParseFlags; returns a dictionary containing the options distributed into their respective construction variables. Normally, this dictionary would be passed to &MergeFlags; to merge the options into a &consenv;, but the dictionary can be edited if desired to provide additional functionality. (Note that if the flags are not going to be edited, calling &MergeFlags; with the options directly will avoid an additional step.) env = Environment() d = env.ParseFlags("-I/opt/include -L/opt/lib -lfoo") for k,v in sorted(d.items()): if v: print k, v env.MergeFlags(d) env.Program('f1.c') % scons -Q CPPPATH ['/opt/include'] LIBPATH ['/opt/lib'] LIBS ['foo'] cc -o f1.o -c -I/opt/include f1.c cc -o f1 f1.o -L/opt/lib -lfoo Note that if the options are limited to generic types like those above, they will be correctly translated for other platform types: C:\>scons -Q CPPPATH ['/opt/include'] LIBPATH ['/opt/lib'] LIBS ['foo'] cl /Fof1.obj /c f1.c /nologo /I\opt\include link /nologo /OUT:f1.exe /LIBPATH:\opt\lib foo.lib f1.obj embedManifestExeCheck(target, source, env) Since the assumption is that the flags are used for the GCC toolchain, unrecognized flags are placed in &cv-link-CCFLAGS; so they will be used for both C and C++ compiles: env = Environment() d = env.ParseFlags("-whatever") for k,v in sorted(d.items()): if v: print k, v env.MergeFlags(d) env.Program('f1.c') % scons -Q CCFLAGS -whatever cc -o f1.o -c -whatever f1.c cc -o f1 f1.o &ParseFlags; will also accept a (recursive) list of strings as input; the list is flattened before the strings are processed: env = Environment() d = env.ParseFlags(["-I/opt/include", ["-L/opt/lib", "-lfoo"]]) for k,v in sorted(d.items()): if v: print k, v env.MergeFlags(d) env.Program('f1.c') % scons -Q CPPPATH ['/opt/include'] LIBPATH ['/opt/lib'] LIBS ['foo'] cc -o f1.o -c -I/opt/include f1.c cc -o f1 f1.o -L/opt/lib -lfoo If a string begins with a "!" (an exclamation mark, often called a bang), the string is passed to the shell for execution. The output of the command is then parsed: env = Environment() d = env.ParseFlags(["!echo -I/opt/include", "!echo -L/opt/lib", "-lfoo"]) for k,v in sorted(d.items()): if v: print k, v env.MergeFlags(d) env.Program('f1.c') % scons -Q CPPPATH ['/opt/include'] LIBPATH ['/opt/lib'] LIBS ['foo'] cc -o f1.o -c -I/opt/include f1.c cc -o f1 f1.o -L/opt/lib -lfoo &ParseFlags; is regularly updated for new options; consult the man page for details about those currently recognized.