[Distutils] MSToolkit and --debug-on-release for MSVCCompiler
Mike C. Fletcher
mcfletch at rogers.com
Tue Oct 19 19:19:10 CEST 2004
M.-A. Lemburg wrote:
...
>> The debug-on-release recipe consists entirely of altering the
>> compile_options and ldflags_shared properties of the compiler
>> object. Problem is, the compiler API assumes that debug is a boolean
>> flag, and AFAICT, has no access to the options the user passed in to
>> whatever command is calling the compiler. As a result, it looks
>> like it would be
>> necessary to provide a compiler sub-class, one where specifying debug
>> causes a debug-on-release set of options to be used. That seems
>> silly, as it's just a feature of the MSVC compilers. Still, don't
>> see any other elegant way to approach the problem. That said, this
>> is a comparatively minor feature (which I'm told isn't really a
>> *great* idea, no matter how practical/useful), so no big deal to keep
>> having people do it with diffs.
>
>
> Perhaps I'm missing something, but I don't really see the advantage here.
> If I call
>
> python setup.py build --debug
>
> I do get proper MSVC debug builds (provided I have the Python debug
> libs installed) of distutils based extensions.
Sure, but if you have a project with, for instance, all of wxPython,
PyOpenGL, PyPgSQL, Numpy, mxBase, and a few other sundry extensions and
all you want to do is track down a shallow error in your application's
tiny little extension, then that "provided" becomes a serious PITA.
Many dependencies require all sorts of setup to provide resources before
they can be built (jpeg and png libraries, tcl/tk installations,
postgresql client libraries, etceteras). Recursively building
*everything* debug through the entire dependency tree can take days (and
you're pretty much certain at *some* point you're going to be linking to
a non-debug library anyway, after all, AFAIK there *is* no debug version
of, for instance, OpenGL or GLU on Windows).
> I'm not even sure whether it's a good idea to mix debug and
> non-debug builds of libs due to the different ways they do
> memory allocation (but this might be a red herring).
Yes, that's what people keep telling me :) . As mentioned, though, I'm
neither too worried about getting *this* recipe in, nor particularly
concerned with the propriety of it (since it's proved useful and
practical on any number of occasions for me and I can keep patching the
msvccompiler manually when I need it). I just figured there may be
others out there in the same boat who'd like the functionality available
w/out the patching fuss.
BTW, I've never actually seen a new failure appear after switching to
the debug-on-release versions of a project, but that could just be a fluke.
Have fun,
Mike
________________________________________________
Mike C. Fletcher
Designer, VR Plumber, Coder
http://www.vrplumber.com
http://blog.vrplumber.com
More information about the Distutils-SIG
mailing list