Hello, I have a patch for distutils-20000204.tar.gz. patch for command/build_ext.py: 1. use correct name 'libs' instead of 'libraries' in build_ext options 2. adjust a String argument in BuildExt.libs to a list 77d76 < 88d86 < 105a104,106

# because fancy_getopts assigns strings if type(self.libs)==StringType: self.libs = [self.libs]

235c236 < libraries = build_info.get ('libraries') ---

libraries = build_info.get ('libs')

The second thing is a suggestion. Bug number 2 occurs on several more places in the distutils code. Everytime the option type is list, the fancy_getopt method stores a string instead. So there are two restrictions for options: 1) An option is allowed only once and 2) an option value type has to be a string. Both restrictions are not necessary. What I want to have is that if I supply mulitple --libs options, each option value gets added to a list. In the current implementation, subsequent option calls override the old value. If I call # ./setup.py build_ext --libs=ssl --libs=crypto the ssl library value gets overridden. Here is the code snippet from fancy_getopt.py thats responsible: attr = attr_name[opt] if takes_arg[opt]: setattr (object, attr, val) Solution: instead of setattr, you should call the "set_option" function of the object with "val" as argument. So in the example above, this is attr = attr_name[opt] if takes_arg[opt]: object.set_option(attr, val) Lets look now at the set_option function. The initial implementation is given in class Command: def set_option (self, option, value): """Set the value of a single option for this command. Raise DistutilsOptionError if 'option' is not known.""" if not hasattr (self, option): raise DistutilsOptionError, \ "command '%s': no such option '%s'" % \ (self.get_command_name(), option) if value is not None: setattr (self, option, value) This is okay if I am happy with the above mentioned restrictions. To extend this function, you override it in a subclass, for example in the BuildExt class: # somewhere in the init function is this statement: self.list_value_options = ["libs", "include_dirs"] # and some more # now the new set_option def set_option(self, option, value): if option in self.list_value_options: getattr(self, option).append(value) else: Command.set_option(self, option, value) Of course the above changes need some further refinement: you have to initialize the list_value_options with the empty list, but then a check "self.libs is None" will fail. Use "not self.libs" instead. Then you have to ensure that every object we supply in fancy_getopt has this set_option method. And so on. What do you think of my suggestion? Greetings, Bastian Kleineidam