[Distutils] Questions about distutils strategy

[James C. Ahlstrom]

"Andrew M. Kuchling" wrote:
> 
> David Ascher writes:
> >The hard thing will probably be to support all of the things which Windows
> >developers expect, such as the ability to have Debug and Release builds
> >(and CE builds, and ...).
> 
> Is it really necessary for people to develop their code using
> Distutils, as opposed to developing in their preferred environment and
> then wrapping things up for distribution?  If I was debugging a C
> module, I don't think I'd bother compiling it through the distutils;
> more likely I'd just write a Makefile.pre.in and Setup.in.

I am (among other things) a Windows developer, and I would never
consider developing a C or C++ module without a project file
in Visual C++.  The project enables you to create Release and Debug
versions.  It has an excellent debugger and I even use it.  Normally
I do without debuggers.  It has built-in Windows documentation
which I can not do without.  It helps navigate the dreadfully complex
Windows compiler options.

In my view, the program building part of distutils is only
relevant to Unix.  Which is fine with me, as I run Unix too.

JimA