[Python-Dev] buildtime vs runtime in Distutils

[Tarek Ziadé]

2009/11/15 "Martin v. Löwis" <martin at v.loewis.de>:
>> The problem is that the main python distribution ("python") is not
>> working as advertised since
>> it contains distutils, which requires "python-devel" to work.
>>
>> This implies that "python" has a dependency on "python-devel", which
>> does not make sense
>> anymore for linux distros to have two distinct packages for Python.
>>
>> Having some of the makefile vars stored in stdlib solve this problem.
>
> I don't see how this can solve the problem. Distutils contains the
> build_ext command, which definitely will require the devel package.

Sure that's the edge case where files like Python.h is required for
compiling C extensions.
And compiler errors can make it pretty clear at this level, that the
devel package is required.
Not because of the need to read a Makefile, but to get the header
files to compile.

And it should be possible to compile extensions that don't require
python-devel at all,
when these extensions are not CPython extensions.

Last, commands like "install" also requires using sysconfig, (thus
reading Makefile) to get some values.
I can change this for "install" it's not hard,  but we would still
provide some public APIs that are reading Makefile from within the
stlib.

right now, importing "disutils.sysconfig" triggers this behavior.

That makes several use case of requiring python-devel just to read a
few values that could be injected
in the stdlib at build time.

Regards
Tarek