[Distutils] distutils.util.get_platform() for Windows

[Mark Hammond]

> At 04:00 PM 7/18/2007 +1000, Mark Hammond wrote:
> >This will result in both the final version of most bdist_*
> installations
> >having the architecture in the filename.  It also has the
> nice side effect
> >of having the temp directories used by these commands include the
> >architecture in their names, meaning its possible to build
> multiple Windows
> >architectures from the same build tree, although that is not
> the primary
> >motivation.
>
> I presume the intention of this is to have it end up as either
> 'win32' or 'win64', yes?

Probably 'win32', 'amd64' or 'itanium' - I'm not worried about the specific
strings, but there would need to be different ones for each of the 64bit
architectures.

> >Also note that bdist_msi has 'win32' hard-coded in one place,
> >where a call to get_platform() would be more appropriate,
> but I'm assuming
> >that is a bug (ie, bdist_msi should use get_platform()
> regardless of the
> >outcome of this discussion about what get_platform() should return)
>
> Well, if it becomes possible to build msi's on other platforms,
> they're still going to target Windows.  Currently you can build a
> bdist_wininst on Linux, for example, especially if it's only pure
> Python contents.

If the feature you refer to was capable of making packages with extension
modules (ie, a kind of cross-compile environment), it seems to me that the
same problem would exist - regardless of the architecture, the generated
filename would always be identical.  There would be no way to identify the
architecture from just the name of the file.  On the other hand, if this
ability to create an MSI on Linux will forever be limited to *only*
pure-python packages, I'd think the needs of people who need to package
multiple architecures on Windows trumps this feature.

Its not clear from your reply, but do you believe that all architectures
having identical filenames is a problem?  If so, how do you think we should
approach it?

Cheers,

Mark