David Ascher wrote:
...
But, as I said emphatically in my last post, those sorts of things must be supplied when Python itself is built. I'm already allowing control over include directories and macros -- which are essential -- so I'm willing to throw in -g/-O stuff too. But if we allow access to arbitrary compiler flags, you can kiss portability goodbye!
Not really -- you simply need to make the consequences of messing with certain objects clear to the user, so that if s/he wants portable, s/he does X, Y and Z, but if s/he wants to distribute the code to a specific machine but with all the other machineries that distutils provides, then s/he can do so.
IMHO, portable packaging will come by folks first using it to package their non-portable code because it's easier than doing it the old way.
yes! speak it, brother!
Seriously: a number of things should have defaults, but there shouldn't be a reason to *force* developers/users into a particular model. As I've said in the past: if you try to do this, then they just won't use it. Developers are a finicky breed :-) It is especially true with Python: reinventing the wheel is cheap, so it happens a lot.
Cheers, -g
-- Greg Stein, http://www.lyra.org/