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

[Alex Martelli]

On Friday 14 June 2002 11:45 am, Fredrik Lundh wrote:
> alex wrote:
> > The "problem" (:-) is that it's great at just building extensions, too.
> >
> > python2.1 setup.py install, python2.2 setup.py install, python2.3
> > setup.py install, and hey pronto, I have my extension built and installed
> > on all Python versions I want to support, ready for testing.  Hard to
> > beat!-)
>
> does your code always work right away?

Never!  As the tests fail and problems are identified, I edit the sources,
and redo the setup.py install on one or more of the Python versions.

> I tend to use an incremental approach, with lots of edit-compile-run

Me too.  Iterative and incremental is highly productive.

> cycles.  I still haven't found a way to get the damn thing to just build
> my extension and copy it to the current directory, so I can run the
> test scripts.

I haven't even looked for such a way, since going to site-packages is
no problem for me.  If I was developing on a Python installation shared
by several users I'd no doubt feel differently about it.

> (distutils is also a pain to use with a version management system
> that marks files in the repository as read-only; distutils copy function

Many things are.  Fortunately, cvs, for all of its problem, doesn't do the
readonly thing:-).


Alex