[David Abrahams]
For years, Boost.Python has been doing some hacks to work around the fact that a Windows Python distro doesn't include the debug build of the library. ... MS is recommending that we (Boost) start distributing a debug build of the Python DLL with Boost, but Boost really seems like the wrong place to host such a thing. Is there any way Python.org can make a debug build more accessible?
Possibly. I don't do this anymore (this == build the Python Windows installers), but I used to. For some time I also made available a zip file containing various debug-build bits, captured at the time the official installer was built. We didn't (and I'm sure we still don't) want to include them in the main installer, because they bloat its size for something most users truly do not want. I got sick of building the debug zip file, and stopped doing that too. No two users wanted the same set of stuff in it, so it grew to contain the union of everything everyone wanted, and then people complained that it was "too big". This is one of the few times in your Uncle Timmy's life that he said "so screw it -- do it yourself, you whiny baby whiners with your incessant baby whining you " ;-) Based on that sure-to-be universal reaction from anyone who signs up for this, I'd say the best thing you could do to help it along is to define precisely (a) what an acceptable distribution format is; and, (b) what exactly it should contain. That, and being nice to Martin, would go a long way.