[Distutils] Autobuild packages using snakebite

[David Lyon]

On Thu, 18 Jun 2009 12:02:24 -0300, Leonardo Santagada
<santagada at gmail.com>
wrote:
> I remember when snakebite was announced someone had the idea to have a  
> kind of build bot go into pypi and get all packages sent to it and  
> automatically compile them on snakebite for all major platforms and  
> automatically run tests and submit the compiled packages to pypi. Is  
> anyone working on this?

I think I suggested that.. 

I followed it up with Snakebite. They said their facilities weren't
operational and they suggested there might be a cost to doing it.. 

They gave me the impression that they wanted to control the coding...

> The biggest problem I see is security, but if people are really  
> interested in this we could at least try it no?

It's not that. It's that the whole thing starts to get really
huge. Really fast...

And in my mind, it starts to look like a commercial service at
some point. Because perphaps developers might find it worthwhile
to donate $20 to test their apps on multiple platforms. I say
this because not many mac users are happy to lend or run
scripts from "those other people for free". And fair enough
too because those machines are not cheap.

Then you have the "free" side... yes.. I still believe that
someone somewhere should be running tests on pypi on the
packages. But that shouldn't cost anybody else. It should
just be built in to the pypi facilities.

Firebird, an open source dbms (http://www.firebirdsql.org/) do 
their open source project very well via a non-profit foundation. 
They just take donations and then direct the funds to paying for
whatever they want done.

Last but not least is the programming... which isn't such a
big deal. But it takes time, effort and dedication. Even though
I regard it as easy* it isn't trivial... :-)

> Automatic testing in many python versions, conversion using 2to3 and  
> building packages for windows and macosx seems like a very interesting  
> service.

yep... sure is...

David