[Distutils] PEP 517 again

[Nathaniel Smith]

On Thu, Aug 24, 2017 at 7:52 AM, Nick Coghlan <ncoghlan at gmail.com> wrote:
>>> - I don't understand how out-of-tree builds and prepare_build_metadata
>>> are supposed to interact.
>
> They don't, since the backend should only implement
> prepare_build_metadata if it can generate the metadata without
> actually triggering a full build of all the binary artifacts.

The reason I had this on the list is that in many build systems, these
two steps are intimately linked. E.g. in autoconf, "figure out which
dependencies I'm going to use" (aka prepare_build_metadata) and "set
up an out-of-tree build directory" are the same operation.
Alternatively "sniff the system and config files etc. to figure out
what what dependencies we're going to use" could be just another build
target -- but then it still requires that the build directory be set
up first.

-n

-- 
Nathaniel J. Smith -- https://vorpus.org