[Python-Dev] Adding a "sysconfig" module in the stdlib

[David Cournapeau]

On Fri, May 8, 2009 at 9:36 AM, Tarek Ziadé <ziade.tarek at gmail.com> wrote:
> Hello,
>
> I am trying to refactor distutils.log in order to use logging but I
> have been bugged by the fact that site.py uses
> distutils.util.get_platform() in "addbuilddir".
> The problem is the order of imports at initialization time : importing
> "logging" into distutils will make the initialization/build fail
> because site.py wil break when
> trying to import "logging", then "time".
>
> Anyways,
> So why site.py looks into distutils ?  because distutils has a few
> functions to get some info about the platform and about the Makefile
> and some
> other header files like pyconfig.h etc.
>
> But I don't think it's the best place for this, and I have a proposal :
>
> let's create a dedicated "sysconfig" module in the standard library
> that will provide all the (refactored) functions located in
> distutils.sysconfig (but not customize_compiler)
> and disutils.util.get_platform.

If we are talking about putting this into the stdlib proper, I would
suggest thinking about putting information for every platform in
sysconfig, instead of just Unix. I understand it is not an easy
problem (because windows builds are totally different than every other
platform), but it would really help for interoperability with other
build tools. If sysconfig is to become independent of distutils, it
should be cross platform and not unix specific.

cheers,

David