[Distutils] [RFC] PEP 345 and PEP 386 updates

[David Cournapeau]

Tarek Ziadé wrote:
> There's something unclear for me here :
>
> What is suppose to happen when you use Python 32bits on a 64bits machine,
> for Python distributions that get build or installed ?
>
> Do you end up in a mixed environment of 64bits distributions within a
> 32bits interpreter ?
>   

Hopefully not - you obviously cannot load 64 bits extensions in a 32
bits interpreter. I don't know the details, but WoW64 virtualizes
everything to look like a 32 bits windows to 32 bits processes (the
registry is different, etc...). But you could imagine that independently
on whether the interpreter is 32 or 64 bits, you need to process things
differently on windows 32 and 64 bits (e.g. a 32 bits python on xp and a
32 bits python on xp 64 may have different requirements). FWIW, the
user-case in scons was detecting Visual Studio.

David