[Python-Dev] _tkinter and setup.py

[Thomas Wouters]

On Mon, Jan 22, 2001 at 03:38:14PM +0100, M.-A. Lemburg wrote:

> > I think Andrew is still working on a way to disable modules from the command
> > line somehow. (I think moving setup.py to setup.py.in, and using autoconf
> > --options would be easiest on both developer and user, but that's just me.)

> This is fairly simple to do: distutils allows great flexibility
> when it comes to adding user options, e.g. we could have
> 
> python setup.py --enable-tkinter --disable-readline
> 
> or more generic
> 
> python setup.py --enable-package tkinter --disable-package readline
> 
> The options could then be edited in setup.cfg.

Note that the 'user' only has 'configure' and 'make' to run, so optimally,
the options would have to be given to one of those (preferably to
'configure', to keep it similar to 90% of the packages out there.)

> but currently the only way to get Python to compile is
> to hand-edit setup.py and this is not easy for people with no 
> prior distutils experience.

You only have to edit the 'disabled_module_list' variable... not too hard
even if you don't have distutils experience (though you do need some python
experience.) I don't think its wrong to expect people who compile alpha
versions to have at least that much knowledge (though it should be noted in
the README somewhere.)

-- 
Thomas Wouters <thomas@xs4all.net>

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