Hey, this to-do list is looking pretty good: lots of "done" items as of today. Highest priority: * bdist_wininst * auto-configuration; currently has enough to support mxDateTime, probably needs some more to support PIL, and then I need to find some other distributions with auto-configuration needs to play with Medium priority: * Cygwin GCC support, Borland C++ support * AIX, OSF/1 support Here's the list... GENERAL ------- * think about how to support distribution-specific "configure" commands -- eg. how can they push option values (include/library directories, that sort of thing) onto the "build_ext" command? [see also "AUTO-CONFIGURATION" section below, and the "config" command] * need a good, general-purpose, portable-if-you-want-it, unportable-if- you-need-control, way for the builder/installer to specify compiler and linker flags (lots of people expect CFLAGS and LDFLAGS to work, so they probably should; but options to either command and/or build are the right way, so those should be preferred) * install_data should install to $prefix by default, not $prefix/share (and should warn if developer doesn't supply any dir component: installing right to $prefix is almost always the wrong thing to do) [done 2000/06/24 GPW] DOCS ---- * write write write * include a standard blurb for README files somewhere PATCH REVIEW/INTEGRATION ------------------------ * review Rene Liebscher's patch for help options: he changed archive_util.py ccompiler.py command/bdist.py command/build.py command/build_clib.py command/build_ext.py command/sdist.py dist.py ...and I checked 'em all in without review because I want other people to try it out and I don't have time to review it right now (and he fixed a stupid bug in bdist.py for me) [done 2000/06/23 GPW] * review Rene Liebscher's cygwinccompiler.py contribution [started and aborted, 2000/06/24 GPW; asked Rene to resubmit patch with stylistic changes] COMMAND-LINE PARSING -------------------- * I think fancy_getopt needs to get fancier to properly support the -I, -D, -l, -L, etc. options of "build_ext": need to be able to accumulate multiple options in a list, should be able to split a string on a given delimiter, probably want to specify if repetitions of the same option will accumulate or replace, etc. * do the above options even work at all? seem to recall hearing reports of dismal failure, but I never looked into it [knowing how FancyGetopt works, there's no way these options can work: damn] COMPILER MODEL & CLASSES ------------------------ * add pre-processor interface to CCompiler (needed to support Autoconf-style 'try_cpp', 'search_cpp', 'search_headers' in config commands) [done, but only UnixCCompiler implements that interface] * fix UnixCCompiler so it doesn't depend on sysconfig (ie. cc must be passed in) [done 2000/06/24 GPW] * allow user to supply cc (compiler executable) in addition to compiler type [done 2000/06/24 GPW] * radically simplify CCompiler method signatures: drop most of the per-invocation customization, and just use the instance attributes for eg. include_dirs, libraries, ... [NB. should probably hold off integrating Cygwin and Borland support until this is done, *if* that is it is the right thing to do...] [update 2000/06/24: I'm cooling to this idea; it turns out the extra complex interface that's been there all along is useful for the "config" command, which has to do lots of little temporary compile and link steps] * Cygwin/Mingw32 support [Rene Liebscher is working on this] * Borland C++ support [Lyle Johnson is working on this] AUTO-CONFIGURATION ------------------ * add more goodies to the standard "config" command, and finish hacking up the example mxDateTime setup script to take advantage of them [partly done: at least enough is there to auto-configure mxDateTime; need to work on PIL's auto-configuration next] EXTENSION BUILDING ------------------ * extension building on AIX [update 2000/06/24: Rene Liebscher has a patch for this, which I have asked him to refine] * support for SWIG -- should just have to specify the .i file and have Distutils take care of running SWIG and knowing what the output is (to be really clever: make sure SWIG's output is included in source distributions, so builders-from-source don't need to have SWIG installed) [update 2000/06/24: Thomas Heller and I have gone back and forth on this a couple times: sounds like Thomas has the right idea, I'll let him work on it] * support for PyFort (lower priority than SWIG!) * OSF/1 problem: ld command has "*" in it, which is appropriate when a shell is involved, but there isn't one here, so we need to strip the quotes (and, ideally, put them back on again when spawn() prints out the command run!) INSTALLATION ------------ * if Distutils installs the first third-party modules in an installation (and creates site-packages), then "install" needlessly warns about having installed to a location not on sys.path -- presumably because site-packages isn't in sys.path at startup, since it doesn't exist until we create it! (I think this is only a problem with 1.5.2, since site-packages is now created when Python is installed -- check!) * need a mechanism for specifying pre-install and post-install hooks, which will be run when installing from a smart built distribution (RPM, wininst, etc.); also, "install" needs to run these hooks *except* for "fake" installs done solely to create a built distribution * bdist_dumb should grow a little intelligence: let packager choose whether to make archive relative to prefix or the root (prefix is essential for proper Windows support ) DISTRIBUTION FORMATS -------------------- * figure out why bdist_rpm doesn't work with RPM 2.x, and make it work if possible [punt: I don't care anymore, if anyone else does, let them fix it] * make "bdist" take multiple formats (both for convenience and consistency with "sdist"); should be doable now that we can reinitialize, refinalize, and (presumably) rerun commands [done 2000/06/06 GPW] * Solaris pkgtool, HP depot [Mark Alexander is working on these] * minimal Windows installer ("bdist_wininst") [Thomas Heller is working on this] * Wise installer for Windows ("bdist_wise") [Thomas Heller said he will work on this when "bdist_wininst" is done] $Id: TODO,v 1.5 2000/06/25 02:37:09 gward Exp $ -- Greg Ward - Linux geek gward@python.net http://starship.python.net/~gward/ No problem is so formidable that you can't just walk away from it.