scons does not work either: ~/lyx-1.5$ mkdir build-tree-scons ~/lyx-1.5$ cd build-tree-scons ~/lyx-1.5/build-tree-scons$ scons -f
In INSTALL.scons, only two ways to fire scons are allowed: from top source directory, or from development/scons. This is because scons tries to locate top source directory and steal version information from configure.ac. Bo