[Distutils] [Python-Dev] Adventures with x64, VS7 and VS8 on Windows

[Trent Mick]

> I'm not quite a '-1', but am a little confused about where this would leave
> us.  To some extent, this would formalize PCBuild8 and VC6 directories.
> External tools would then slowly start growing support for these additional
> directories and the previous benefits of "PCBuild is the canonical location"
> appear to vanish.  Further, I expect that such a patch would confuse any
> attempts to manually copy from PCBuild8 into PCBuild, for example (ie, some
> tools knowing about PCBuild8 while others assume PCBuild is likely to get
> confusing.)
> 
> Trent: I assume you use the same source tree for multiple platforms and
> compilers, meaning that changing these "optional" build processes to copy
> from PCBuild8/VC6 into PCBuild would cause pain?  If not, do you think that
> would be a reasonable solution?

Changing to have bits always in PCbuild would work for me -- i.e. I 
*don't* build for multiple compilers/platforms in the same tree.

Perhaps that is a better solution -- in the long run, anyway. Having the 
"bits" always in one dir for whatever the configuration is more akin to 
the Unix-y configure/make system. Is this something that could work for 
Python 2.5? Or just 2.6?

Long term/aside: Moving to a configure/make build system on Windows, as 
you proposed in your first email, would be interesting. With MSYS 
though, not cygwin (a la bsmedberg's new MozillaBuild stuff).  I just 
wish there were an autoconf alternative that wasn't as painful as 
autoconf. I have a few attempts for my purposes that are written in 
Python (an obvious bootstrapping problem for building Python itself :).

Trent

-- 
Trent Mick
trentm at activestate.com