[Python-Dev] Platform extension for distutils on other interpreters than CPython

[Glyph Lefkowitz]

On Feb 23, 2010, at 2:10 PM, Tarek Ziadé wrote:

> On Tue, Feb 23, 2010 at 1:50 PM, Maciej Fijalkowski <fijall at gmail.com> wrote:
>> Hello.
>> 
>> I would like to have a feature on platform module (or sys or
>> somewhere) that can tell distutils or distutils2 that this platform
>> (be it PyPy or Jython) is not able to compile any C module. The
>> purpose of this is to make distutils bail out in more reasonable
>> manner than a compilation error in case this module is not going to
>> work on anything but CPython.
>> 
>> What do you think?
> 
> +1
> 
> I think we could have a global variable in sys, called "dont_compile",
> distutils would look at
> before it tris to compile stuff, exactly like how it does for pyc file
> (sys.dont_write_bytecode)

Every time somebody says "let's have a global variable", God kills a kitten.

If it's in sys, He bludgeons the kitten to death *with another kitten*.

sys.dont_write_bytecode really ought to have been an API of an importer object somewhere; hopefully, when Brett has the time to finish the refactoring which he alluded to at the language summit, it will be.

Similarly, functionally speaking this API is a good idea, but running the C compiler is distutils' job.   Therefore any API which describes this functionality should be close to distutils itself.