Mailman 3 August 1999 - Distutils-SIG

Can now compile simple extensions
by Greg Ward 29 Apr '18

29 Apr '18

Hi all -- at long last, I found the time to hack in the ability to compile extension modules to the Distutils. Mainly, this meant adding a 'build_ext' command which uses a CCompiler instance for all its dirty work. I also had to add a few methods to CCompiler (and, of course, UnixCCompiler) to make this work. And I added a new module, 'spawn', which takes care of running sub-programs more efficiently and robustly (no shell involved) than os.system. That's needed, obviously, so we can run the compiler! If you're in the mood for grubbing over raw source code, then get the latest from CVS or download a current snapshot. See http://www.python.org/sigs/distutils-sig/implementation.html for a link to the code snapshot. I'm still waiting for more subclasses of CCompiler to appear. At the very least, we're going to need MSVCCompiler to build extensions on Windows. Any takers? Also, someone who knows the Mac, and how to run compilers programmatically there, will have to figure out how to write a Mac-specific concrete CCompiler subclass. The spawn module also needs a bit of work to be portable. I suspect that _win32_spawn() (the intended analog to my _posix_spawn()) will be easy to implement, if it even needs to go in a separate function at all. It looks from the Python Library documentation for 1.5.2 that the os.spawnv() function is all we need, but it's a bit hard to figure out just what's needed. Windows wizards, please take a look at the 'spawn()' function and see if you can make it work on Windows. As for actually compiling extensions: well, if you can figure out the build_ext command, go ahead and give it a whirl. It's a bit cryptic right now, since there's no documentation and no example setup.py. (I have a working example at home, but it's not available online.) If you feel up to it, though, see if you can read the code and figure out what's going on. I'm just hoping *I'll* be able to figure out what's going on when I get back from the O'Reilly conference next week... ;-) Enjoy -- Greg -- Greg Ward - software developer gward(a)cnri.reston.va.us Corporation for National Research Initiatives 1895 Preston White Drive voice: +1-703-620-8990 Reston, Virginia, USA 20191-5434 fax: +1-703-620-0913

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Two fixes (at last)
by Greg Ward 29 Apr '18

29 Apr '18

Hi all -- at long last, I have fixed two problems that a couple people noticed a while ago: * I folded in Amos Latteier's NT patches almost verbatim -- just changed an `os.path.sep == "/"' to `os.name == "posix"' and added some comments bitching about the inadequacy of the current library installation model (I think this is Python's fault, but for now Distutils is slavishly aping the situation in Python 1.5.x) * I fixed the problem whereby running "setup.py install" without doing anything else caused a crash (because 'build' hadn't yet been run). Now, the 'install' command automatically runs 'build' before doing anything; to make this bearable, I added a 'have_run' dictionary to the Distribution class to keep track of which commands have been run. So now not only are command classes singletons, but their 'run' method can only be invoked once -- both restrictions enforced by Distribution. The code is checked into CVS, or you can download a snapshot at http://www.python.org/sigs/distutils-sig/distutils-19990607.tar.gz Hope someone (Amos?) can try the new version under NT. Any takers for Mac OS? BTW, all parties involved in the Great "Where Do We Install Stuff?" Debate should take a good, hard look at the 'set_final_options()' method of the Install class in distutils/install.py; this is where all the policy decisions about where to install files are made. Currently it apes the Python 1.5 situation as closely as I could figure it out. Obviously, this is subject to change -- I just don't know to *what* it will change! Greg -- Greg Ward - software developer gward(a)cnri.reston.va.us Corporation for National Research Initiatives 1895 Preston White Drive voice: +1-703-620-8990 Reston, Virginia, USA 20191-5434 fax: +1-703-620-0913

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Package versioning
by Timothy Docker 29 Apr '18

29 Apr '18

Hi all, I've been aware that the distutils sig has been simmerring away, but until recently it has not been directly relevant to what I do. I like the look of the proposed api, but have one question. Will this support an installed system that has multiple versions of the same package installed simultaneously? If not, then this would seem to be a significant limitation, especially when dependencies between packages are considered. Assuming it does, then how will this be achieved? I am presently managing this with a messy arrangement of symlinks. A package is installed with its version number in it's name, and a separate directory is created for an application with links from the unversioned package name to the versioned one. Then I just set the pythonpath to this directory. A sample of what the directory looks like is shown below. I'm sure there is a better solution that this, and I'm not sure that this would work under windows anyway (does windows have symlinks?). So, has this SIG considered such versioning issues yet? Cheers, Tim -------------------------------------------------------------- Tim Docker timd(a)macquarie.com.au Quantative Applications Division Macquarie Bank -------------------------------------------------------------- qad16:qad $ ls -l lib/python/ total 110 drwxr-xr-x 2 mts mts 512 Nov 11 11:23 1.1 -r--r----- 1 root mts 45172 Sep 1 1998 cdrmodule_0_7_1.so drwxr-xr-x 2 mts mts 512 Sep 1 1998 chart_1_1 drwxr-xr-x 3 mts mts 512 Sep 1 1998 Fnorb_0_7_1 dr-xr-x--- 3 mts mts 512 Nov 11 11:21 Fnorb_0_8 drwxr-xr-x 3 mts mts 1536 Mar 3 12:45 mts_1_1 dr-xr-x--- 7 mts mts 512 Nov 11 11:22 OpenGL_1_5_1 dr-xr-x--- 2 mts mts 1024 Nov 11 11:23 PIL_0_3 drwxr-xr-x 3 mts mts 512 Sep 1 1998 Pmw_0_7 dr-xr-x--- 2 mts mts 512 Nov 11 11:21 v3d_1_1 qad16:qad $ ls -l lib/python/1.1 total 30 lrwxrwxrwx 1 root other 29 Apr 10 10:43 _glumodule.so -> ../OpenGL_1_5_1/_glumodule.so lrwxrwxrwx 1 root other 30 Apr 10 10:43 _glutmodule.so -> ../OpenGL_1_5_1/_glutmodule.so lrwxrwxrwx 1 root other 22 Apr 10 10:43 _imaging.so -> ../PIL_0_3/_imaging.so lrwxrwxrwx 1 root other 36 Apr 10 10:43 _opengl_nummodule.so -> ../OpenGL_1_5_1/_opengl_nummodule.so lrwxrwxrwx 1 root other 27 Apr 10 10:43 _tkinter.so -> ../OpenGL_1_5_1/_tkinter.so lrwxrwxrwx 1 mts mts 21 Apr 10 10:43 cdrmodule.so -> ../cdrmodule_0_7_1.so lrwxrwxrwx 1 mts mts 12 Apr 10 10:43 chart -> ../chart_1_1 lrwxrwxrwx 1 root other 12 Apr 10 10:43 Fnorb -> ../Fnorb_0_8 lrwxrwxrwx 1 mts mts 12 Apr 10 10:43 mts -> ../mts_1_1 lrwxrwxrwx 1 root other 15 Apr 10 10:43 OpenGL -> ../OpenGL_1_5_1 lrwxrwxrwx 1 root other 33 Apr 10 10:43 opengltrmodule.so -> ../OpenGL_1_5_1/opengltrmodule.so lrwxrwxrwx 1 root other 33 Apr 10 10:43 openglutil_num.so -> ../OpenGL_1_5_1/openglutil_num.so lrwxrwxrwx 1 root other 10 Apr 10 10:43 PIL -> ../PIL_0_3 lrwxrwxrwx 1 mts mts 10 Apr 10 10:43 Pmw -> ../Pmw_0_7 lrwxrwxrwx 1 root other 10 Apr 10 10:43 v3d -> ../v3d_1_1

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[Distutils-sig] distutils charter and interscript
by John Skaller 29 Apr '18

29 Apr '18

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Info on MSVCCompiler [ was: Can now compile simple extensions]
by Perry A. Stoll 24 Aug '99

24 Aug '99

I just got confirmation that my original post to this sig was rejected, so in case people have been wondering what David was talking about last week: I sent a set of files to get distutils working on NT. I sent this message to Greg, David, and the list. Unfortunately, it was rejected from the list being too big (40K). Greg suggested I resend the original pieces in smaller chunks: the patches to the main distribution, MSVCCompiler.py, and a small sample setup.py showing what I used to build NumPy on NT. Would anyone be interested in taking a look at these before Greg gets back from the O'Reilly Open Source conference next week? If so, drop me a note. I'll either email it or post it to the list in smaller chunks if interest warrants. Otherwise I'll wait until Greg takes a look and incorporates them into the main distribution as he sees fit. Here's the text that accompanied my first post: Nice work, Greg! I thought I'd let David take a break on this one, so attached is an MSVCCompiler, which works for me using MSVC 5.0. Not much has changed on the command line usage for MSVC 6.0, so this should probably work there also. Also, I've attached a bunch of context diffs against the main distribution. Some bug fixes, a couple other changes (like a working spawn for NT). Oh, right. I also managed to use this to compile NumPy on Windows. I've attached the setup script I used for that, too. This showed that we have a few more issues to shake out, but it's looking good! Comments on the changes (the attached diff file) and other things I noticed: 1 ) You'll notice that I added static attributes to both UnixCompiler and MSVCCompiler to hold the normal extensions for object files, shared libraries, static libraries, and executables (those _obj_ext, _exe_ext things) Also, added method object_name and shared_library_name, I needed this to get some of the test scripts (like test_cc.py) to make sense and be more portable. We might rethink how this info is actually accessed. 2) I needed to pass the build info to the link_shared_object methods of ccompiler. In this case, I needed to specify the .def file for linking the dynamic libraries. Is this ok? How else are we going to let platform specific build info get passed? This worked for now, but it's not great. 3) Added .cpp as an allowable extension. This is almost mandatory for doing any development on NT, since this is the default extension MSVC for a new C++ file. 4) Modified test/test_cc.py to be a bit more readable (my preference, feel free to ignore). 5) Had to do some awful mucking in sysconfig, as you probably know. Still have a way to go until it really works. 6) build_py doesn't do the right thing if there are no py_modules in setup. 7) A couple bug fixes in install_py If you have any questions about the patches, just ask. -Perry perry.stoll(a)mail.com -----Original Message----- From: David Ascher <da(a)ski.org> To: Perry A. Stoll <pas(a)scansoft.com> Cc: Greg Ward <gward(a)cnri.reston.va.us>; distutils-sig(a)python.org <distutils-sig(a)python.org> Date: Thursday, August 19, 1999 11:20 PM Subject: Re: [Distutils] Can now compile simple extensions >On Thu, 19 Aug 1999, Perry A. Stoll wrote: > >> Nice work, Greg! I thought I'd let David take a break on this one, so >> attached is an MSVCCompiler, which works for me using MSVC 5.0. Not much has >> changed on the command line usage for MSVC 6.0, so this should probably work >> there also. > >Great! It's a very good thing for Greg given his talk on Monday! A very >good thing for me (for obvious reasons), and, of course, a very good thing >for Python users worldwide. > >Thanks, Perry! > >--david > >

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Re: Add multiple frozen modules
by Gordon McMillan 17 Aug '99

17 Aug '99

(Doing my bi-monthly perusal of Distutils activity, I find...) [Mark] > .... Specifically, Greg Stien and Gordon McMillan (and plenty of > people before them :-) seem to have what is considered "state of the > art" in where this is heading. [Jim Ahlstrom] I don't know of techniques which aren't Windows specific. Greg??Gordon?? Mark is referring to Greg's imputil.py (http://www.lyra.org/greg/small/) and some of the places I've taken it. My Win32-specific installer (ftp://ftp.python.org/pub/python/contrib/System/Installer_r_01.exe) makes use of this, but not all of it is Windows specific. (I originally packaged it so the cross-platform stuff was available separately, but there was no apparent interest from non-Windows users.) Greg's imputil.py basically makes it possible to create a chain of importers, with the standard mechanism pushed to the end. Writing an importer is easy. You set up the chain is site.py. I created a way of building archives of .pyc's (or .pyo's, though I've never worked with them). These are compressed with zlib. The standard library fits in about 500K and (subjectively) it is no slower and perhaps faster than the regular method. The mechanism handles modules and packages, and the building of an archive can be done in all kinds of ways (including using modulefinder from freeze). I also created another kind of archive that can package up arbitrary stuff, and is fairly easily unpacked from C code. All of the above is cross-platform. On Windows, this means you can have a complete Python installation (independent of any other Python installation) in a single directory: myPython/ python.exe (and/or pythonw.exe) python15.dll (completely vanilla) py_lib.pyz exceptions.py (from the std distr) site.py (hacked to load all the .pyz's) [any other .pyd's or .dll's you want] [more .pyz's if you want] [more .py's if you want] (The Window's installation / standalone stuff goes further than this). These .pyz's do work on Linux, but the steps Python goes through to determine where it lives is simpler on Windows. I'm not sure what it would take to get a single directory Python installation (independent of any other installed Pythons) working on *nix. - Gordon

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pyz VS zip
by Darrell 11 Aug '99

11 Aug '99

Warning, new comer at large. I've been playing with Gordon's win32 installer and really like the idea of the .pyz to wrap things up. I've been doing the same thing with zlib to create .pyc files. I send them too other people I work with. They execute the .pyc which explodes on their disk. It runs a setup.py file and handles platform details. Archives are real handy and zip is a pretty standard one. So wouldn't zip compatibility be good. It seems that understanding the header format for zip along with zlib might let you decode a zip. There's a bunch of zip info at: http://www.cdrom.com/pub/infozip/Info-ZIP.html And an unzip.dll that could be used if decoding the header was too much pain. Has anyone tried to work with zips from python ? --Darrell

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Distutils-SIG August 1999