[Python-Dev] Re: Switching to VC.NET 2003

[Paolo Invernizzi]

Martin v. Loewis wrote:
> No. Microsoft has dropped that feature (perhaps they will restore it
> in VS.NET 2005 or something :-(
> 
> However, it is now simpler to process project files; they are XML
> files with a fairly obvious vocabulary (*). A friend of mine once
> wrote a generator that produces GNU makefiles out of vcproj files;
> such generators tend to be quite application-specific, as they
> need to take custom build steps into account, and translate them
> properly. Most likely, the generator we would use would not be
> useful outside Python.

I can suggest the fact that Scons can handle multiple builders (cygwin, 
mingw, VC6, VC7, VC7.1) easily and for VC it can generate the proper 
Project files?

Can be a solution to support a single scons (makefile like) file and 
from that generate the proper project files?

Users that wants to keep working with the IDE can do that!

A free solution for a user that want to build python in a win32 
environment without Visual Studio (whatever edition) could be:

- Download python (from 1.5.2 above) and scons (as a make replacement)
- Build python with the free Microsoft SDK compiler via scons.

Scons has also an integrated autoconf-like environment, so it's possible 
to have a path to unify the classic configure/make *nix way with the 
win32 one.

BTW, scons makefiles are just python files! Think only about the *update 
the python build number* problem that arose some times ago! It's trivial 
if handled by a builder script with-python-steroids!

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Paolo Invernizzi