[Distutils] autoconf in distutils?

[M.-A. Lemburg]

lannert@lannert.rz.uni-duesseldorf.de wrote:
> 
> [I'm only subscribed to the digest; please bear with me if I'm out
>  of sync with the current status of the discussion]
> 
> Greg Ward wrote:
> > Sooner or
> > later (probably sooner), somebody is going to want to say:
> >
> >   if compiler == 'gcc' and platform == 'linux-x86':
> >     compiler_options.append ('-funroll-loops')
> >
> > ...and that's probably only the beginning. ...
> 
> and, later on, suggested variables like OS class, OS name, OS version,
> OS vendor, architecture, etc. etc.
> 
> IIRC, Marc-Andre's suggestion pointed into a somewhat different
> direction: that the properties of a certain [instance of an] OS
> would be described by a set of variables indicating system
> "behaviour", rather than the formal vendor/version/architecture
> description.

Well, to make things complete, here are the three suggestions
again:

· a way to test compiler features a la configure, e.g. a simple
  way to pass a small C program and evaluate the compiler error
  message (error or no error should suffice)

· a way to test the availability of (shared) libs in much
  the same way, e.g. try to link an empty object file against a set
  of given libs to see if the linker finds the libs or not

· a way to access the compiler/linker name and version

More specific the methods:

· testcompile(program_string[,options])
· testcompileandlink(program_string[,options,libs])

which return 1/0 to state "success" / "failure" and implement
proper cleanup of the intermediate files.

And an interface much like the one Greg proposed in his
last mail for the compiler/linker/platform names.

Note that I only mention abstract interfaces. It's up to the
distribution author to use these and do something useful
with them.

On the practical side: does anyone know of ways to figure out
those names ? E.g. how would one test for RedHat vs. SuSE,
libc5 vs. libc6, MSVC vs. Borland C++ ?

-- 
Marc-Andre Lemburg
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