[Python-Dev] PEP 229 and 222

[Greg Ward]

On 01 December 2000, Thomas Heller said:
> Distutils currently only supports build_*** commands for
> C-libraries and Python extensions.
> 
> Shouldn't there also be build commands for shared libraries,
> executable programs and static Python binaries?

Andrew and I talked about this a bit yesterday, and the proposed
interface is as follows:

    python setup.py build_ext --static

will compile all extensions in the current module distribution, but
instead of creating a .so (.pyd) file for each one, will create a new
python binary in build/bin.<plat>.

Issue to be resolved: what to call the new python binary, especially
when installing it (presumably we *don't* want to clobber the stock
binary, but supplement it with (eg.) "foopython").

Note that there is no provision for selectively building some extensions
as shared.  This means that Andrew's Distutil-ization of the standard
library will have to override the build_ext command and have some extra
way to select extensions for shared/static.  Neither of us considered
this a problem.

> BTW: Distutils-sig seems pretty dead these days...

Yeah, that's a combination of me playing on other things and python.net
email being dead for over a week.  I'll cc the sig on this and see if
this interface proposal gets anyone's attention.

        Greg