[Python-Dev] addressing distutils inability to track file dependencies

[Thomas Heller]

From: "Fredrik Lundh" <fredrik@pythonware.com>
> consider PIL, for example: in my source directory, I have the
> following files, checked out from a repository:
>
>     setup.py
>     _imaging.c
>     *.c
>     PIL/*.py
>
> I want to be able to run setup.py and end up with an _imaging.pyd
> in the same directory.  I don't want distutils to attempt to copy
> stuff from PIL/*.py to PIL/*.py, mess up other parts of my source
> tree, install any scripts (broken or not) in the Python directory, or
> just generally make an ass of itself when failing to copy readonly
> files on top of other readonly files.
>

Then there's Berthold Höllmanns test-command he posted to the
distutils sig, which internally runs the 'build' command, then extends
sys.path by build_purelib, build_platlib, and the test-directory, and
finally runs the tests in the test-directory files.

For the readonly file issue, I have a force_remove_tree() function in
one of my setup-scripts (well, actually it is part of the
pyexe-distutils extension), cloned from distutils' remove_tree()
function.

Thomas