On 26 May 2000, Rene Liebscher said:
Perhaps, someone else has a better overview and wants to start it. At least it would be helpful to know all options which could need more documentation.
So please, extend this list:
* build_ext, compiler : list of available compilers (and their long names like 'Microsoft Visual C++ 5.X and higher' or so)
* bdist, format : list + explanation (gztar : creates XXXX.tar.gz)
That's all I can think of right now. Here's a Stupid Unix Trick (TM) to get help for all Distutils commands: ./setup.py --help `./setup.py --help-commands | awk '/^ [a-z]/ {print $1}'` (err, assuming setup.py is executable and has a proper #! line). Scanning the output of this, I see: build, build_ext, build_clib --compiler sdist --formats bdist --formats written that way because the three commands with --compiler have the same list of compilers, but the two options with --format have different lists of formats. So yes, you got them all. But there could well be more in future, so I think it's worth adding a smidge of bureaucracy to grease the wheels here. Here's a strawman proposal for "custom help option" interface. The above five command classes (and any future commands with similar requirements) would define a class attribute 'help_options': class build (Command): # ... help_options = [('compiler', show_compilers, "list available compilers (for --compiler option)")] When 'parse_command_line()' (in Distribution) sees this list, it would mangle each entry as appropriate to feed into the FancyGetopt parser, so that the following would appear in the help for "build": [...] --compiler (-c) specify the compiler type --help-compiler list available compilers (for --compiler option) [...] When --help-compiler is seen on the command line, the function 'show_compilers()' would be called. (Presumably this would really be provided by the ccompiler module, since the same function would be needed in three commands.) This has to be a function object, not a method (or method name), since the command class hasn't been instantiated when we're just parsing the command line. Presence of any --help option should terminate processing -- see the code in 'parse_command_line()'. Rene, can you whip up a patch for this? Thanks! Greg -- Greg Ward - nerd gward@python.net http://starship.python.net/~gward/ I guess it was all a DREAM ... or an episode of HAWAII FIVE-O ...