[Distutils] cross-compilation patches

[Václav Šmilauer]

Hi evrybody,

I hope this is the right SIG for cross-compilation of Python interpreter 
(not of 3rd party modules -- yet).

As you may know, cross-compilation was being declared unsupported for a 
long time and contributions in that area were not always gladly 
accepted. There have been numerous attempts to improve the situation, 
usually ending in patches in bugzilla which quickly became obsolete, 
resulting in frustration and great and repeated waste of manpower. Most 
active proponents of these patches were, it seems, Tarek Ziadé and 
Roumen Petrov.

Roumen made an impressive set of patches against 3.4 at the end of 2013, 
all referenced from [1]; they are split into modernization of 
mingw&cygwin classes (as a prominent case of cross-building), 
cross-building interpreter core, cross-building core modules, and 
cross-installation. Each of these references individual issues (e.g. 
interpreter core in [2] references 15 issues, each with patch, core 
modules [3] have 24 sub-issues).

Since I have been needing cross-build support (build for Windows, and 
recently also Xeon Phi as targets, on Linux host) myself, I would like 
these patches not fall under the table again. I was pointed to this SIG 
to see what could be done (or, more precisely, what could I do) for 
those patches to be progressively integrated.

Some people mention that the infrastructure is currently missing a 
cross-building bot, without which regressions will soon creep in again. 
What can be done in this regard, what is needed?

Cheers, Václav

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[1] http://bugs.python.org/issue3871#msg199695
[2] http://bugs.python.org/issue17605
[3] http://bugs.python.org/issue18653