[Distutils] Compiler abstractiom model

[Greg Stein]

David Ascher wrote:
>...
> > But, as I said emphatically in my last post, those sorts of things must
> > be supplied when Python itself is built.  I'm already allowing control
> > over include directories and macros -- which are essential -- so I'm
> > willing to throw in -g/-O stuff too.  But if we allow access to
> > arbitrary compiler flags, you can kiss portability goodbye!
> 
> Not really -- you simply need to make the consequences of messing with
> certain objects clear to the user, so that if s/he wants portable, s/he
> does X, Y and Z, but if s/he wants to distribute the code to a specific
> machine but with all the other machineries that distutils provides, then
> s/he can do so.
> 
> IMHO, portable packaging will come by folks first using it to package
> their non-portable code because it's easier than doing it the old way.

yes!  speak it, brother!

Seriously: a number of things should have defaults, but there shouldn't
be a reason to *force* developers/users into a particular model. As I've
said in the past: if you try to do this, then they just won't use it.
Developers are a finicky breed :-) It is especially true with Python:
reinventing the wheel is cheap, so it happens a lot.

Cheers,
-g

--
Greg Stein, http://www.lyra.org/