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

[Guido van Rossum]

> consider PIL, for example: in my source directory, I have the
> following files, checked out from a repository:
> 
>     setup.py
>     _imaging.c
>     *.c
>     PIL/*.py
> 
> I want to be able to run setup.py and end up with an _imaging.pyd
> in the same directory.  I don't want distutils to attempt to copy
> stuff from PIL/*.py to PIL/*.py, mess up other parts of my source
> tree, install any scripts (broken or not) in the Python directory, or
> just generally make an ass of itself when failing to copy readonly
> files on top of other readonly files.

I thought that the thing to do this was

  python setup.py build_ext -i

--Guido van Rossum (home page: http://www.python.org/~guido/)