98 lines
3.0 KiB
Plaintext
98 lines
3.0 KiB
Plaintext
PEP: 229
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Title: Using Distutils to Build Python
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Version: $Revision$
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Author: akuchlin@mems-exchange.org (A.M. Kuchling)
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Status: Draft
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Type: Standards
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Created: 16-Nov-2000
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Post-History:
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Introduction
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The Modules/Setup mechanism has some flaws:
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* People have to remember to uncomment bits of Modules/Setup in
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order to get all the possible modules.
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* Moving Setup to a new version of Python is tedious; new modules
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have been added, so you can't just copy the older version, but
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have to reconcile the two versions.
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* Users have to figure out where the needed libraries, such as
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zlib, are installed.
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Proposal
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Use the Distutils to build the modules that come with Python.
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The changes can be broken up into several pieces:
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1. The Distutils needs some Python modules to be able to build
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modules. Currently I believe the minimal list is posix, _sre,
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and string.
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These modules will have to be built before the Distutils can be
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used, so they'll simply be hardwired into Modules/Makefile and
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be automatically built.
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2. A top-level setup.py script will be written that checks the
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libraries installed on the system and compiles as many modules
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as possible.
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3. Modules/Setup will be kept and settings in it will override
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setup.py's usual behavior, so you can disable a module known
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to be buggy, or specify particular compilation or linker flags.
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However, in the common case where setup.py works correctly,
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everything in Setup will remain commented out. The other
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Setup.* become unnecessary, since nothing will be generating
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Setup automatically.
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Implementation
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Patch #102588 on SourceForge will contain the proposed patch.
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As of Dec. 1, the patch does the following:
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* Removes the use of makesetup in building the interpreter.
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* Hard-codes the presence of the strop, posix, and _sre modules.
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* Adds an empty top-level setup.py file.
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Still to be done:
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* Write the top-level setup.py
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* Handle a few tricky bits such as the signal module.
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Unresolved Issues
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Do we need to make it possible to disable the 3 hard-wired modules
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without manually hacking the Makefiles? If yes, perhaps a
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configure switch is sufficient.
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The Distutils always compile modules as shared libraries. How do
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we support compiling them statically into the resulting Python
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binary?
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[Answer: building a Python binary with the Distutils should be
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feasible, though no one has implemented it yet. This will need to
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be done, though the main setup.py will probably need to implement
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its own BuildExt subclass anyway.]
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makesetup and the other contents of $(LIBPL)/config need to be
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preserved for compatibility with existing modules; for how many
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versions do we need to keep them around?
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Copyright
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This document has been placed in the public domain.
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Local Variables:
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mode: indented-text
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indent-tabs-mode: nil
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End:
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