[Python-Dev] addressing distutils inability to track file dependencies

[Skip Montanaro]

    >> That's incorrect.  Distutils is not a make substitute and I doubt it
    >> ever will be.  What dependency checking it does do is incomplete and
    >> this gives rise to problems that are reported fairly frequently.

    Martin> Can you provide a specific example to support this criticism?
    Martin> Could you also explain how generating makefiles would help?

>From python-list on June 10 (this is what made me wish yet again for better
dependency checking):

    http://mail.python.org/pipermail/python-list/2002-June/108153.html

It's clear nobody but me wants this, though I find it hard to believe most
of you haven't been burned in the past the same way the above poster was.
Frequently, after executing "cvs up" I see almost all of the Python core
rebuild because some commonly used header file was modified, yet find that
distutils rebuilds nothing.  If a header file is modified which causes most
of Objects and Python to be rebuilt, but nothing in Modules is rebuilt, I'm
immediately suspicious.

Here's a simple test you can perform at home.  Build Python.  Touch
Include/Python.h.  Run make again.  Notice how the core files are all
rebuilt but no modules are.  Touch Modules/dbmmodule.c (or something else
that builds).  Run make again.

I'm simply going to stop worrying about it and just keep deleting all the
stuff distutils builds to make sure I get correct shared libraries.

Skip