Skip Montanaro skip@pobox.com writes:
Python's setup.py has grown way out of control. I'm trying to build and install Python 2.4.0 on a Solaris system with Tcl/Tk installed in a non-standard place and I can't figure out the incantation to tell setup.py to look where they are installed.
This may be more due to the complexity of distutils than to setup.py itself. Special cases are special cases, after all, e.g. look at Autotools.
setup.py is billed as "Autodetecting setup.py script for building the Python extensions" but exactly how to override it without hacking it isn't very well documented, when possible at all.
"Distributing Python Modules" helped me, but the reference section is missing, so it's utsl from there.
So one improvement would be to better document overriding setup.py in README.
Your solution may be as simple as adding to Makefile:342 (approx)
--include-dirs=xxxx --library-dirs=yyyy
where setup.py is called. (distutils/command/build_ext.py)
*But* I suspect build() may not pass the options through to build_ext()!
So, a config file approach:
.../src/setup.cfg: [build_ext] include-dirs=xxxx library-dirs=yyyy
In setup.py, PyBuildExt.build_extension() does most of the special casing. The last thing done is to call PyBuildExt.detect_tkinter() which handles a bunch of platform incompatibilities. e.g.
# OpenBSD and FreeBSD use Tcl/Tk library names like libtcl83.a, but # the include subdirs are named like .../include/tcl8.3.
If the previous ideas flub, you could hack your detect_tkinter() and append your include and lib dirs to inc_dirs and lib_dirs at the beginning of the method.
All else fails, use Modules/Setup.dist to install Tcl/Tk?
Or maybe symlink your non-standard location?