[Distutils] working on a build system

[Fred L. Drake]

Andrew Dalke writes:
 >   configure -- used to generate the Makefile and maybe other files;
 >      like a "make.dat" file which is include'd by all Makefiles.

  I'd avoid using this name if it isn't an autoconf-generated
configure file.  If it is, what you want to save is the configure.in
file.

 > Is there a Python way to read/parse pod files?  If not, using perl for 
 > this is fine with us.

  I suspect it would be trivial, but haven't written any POD
documentation myself, so I'm probably not the one to do it.  ;-)

 > %.dist:
 >         $(PYTHON) -c "import build; build.distrib('$*')"
...
 > but I don't know how to do this sort of trick under non-GNU make.  Any
 > advice?

  I don't either.  Most makes can't do nearly as much as GNU make; the 
most portable solution is "don't do that".  If there are only a few
targets that need to be phrased like this (meaning: if the set doesn't 
change often), just write them out.

 > As I said, this is still in the planning stages for us, so I would
 > like input on these ideas.  Of course, I plan to make this framework
 > available, and think part of it -- at least some of the ideas -- will
 > be useful for distutil.

  This sounds like an impressive system.  Discussions and
collaboration are definately in order.


  -Fred

--
Fred L. Drake, Jr.	     <fdrake@acm.org>
Corporation for National Research Initiatives
1895 Preston White Dr.	    Reston, VA  20191