[Distutils] updated SF patch

[Jeremy Hylton]

>>>>> "PP" == Pearu Peterson <pearu@cens.ioc.ee> writes:

  PP> For your information, the module scipy_distutils from the SciPy
  PP> (www.scipy.org) package extends distutils quite a bit: it
  PP> provides definitions for a dozen of Fortran 77/90/95 compilers
  PP> from different vendors, it supports compilation of Fortran
  PP> sources and building (automatically generated) extension modules
  PP> to wrap Fortran and C libraries, etc.

Thanks for the pointer!  I had no idea what kind of extensions people
had come up with and it's quite educational (for me at least) to see
one. 

  PP> to wrap Fortran and C libraries, etc.  To achieve all that many
  PP> hooks from the standard distutils needed to be extended and I
  PP> cannot imagine if all that could have be done using just a
  PP> "small" API (whatever that would be).

I guess I don't know what a "small" API would be either.  My concern
is that an extension could rely on accidents of the current
implementation without realizing it.  Since there's no documented
API, there's no way for an extension writer to know what is
intentional and what is accidental.

  PP> However, I don't know what kind of changes are you planning and
  PP> therefore I am not sure if they would have any impact to
  PP> scipy_distutils.

I had specifically wondered about all the verbose arguments passed to
distutils functions and the announce() method on some objects.  I just
checked in some changes that effectively ignores the verbose argument,
and I wondered if it needed to be preserved at all.  I see that the
scipy_distutils passes the verbose argument to several functions, so
removal of it would affect you.

  PP> What is the definition of handful people? Do you count extension
  PP> developers or the users of these extensions? If the later, one
  PP> would really need lots of hands when considering the current
  PP> user base of SciPy alone (to give some idea, currently there are
  PP> more than 100 subscribers to the scipy users mailing list formed
  PP> in less than one year).

I think we would have to consider the users of the extensions, too.
(But if you're the only one, we can figure something out <wink>.)

Jeremy