[Python-Dev] configure produces a non-working Makefile in some scenarios, due to ASDLGEN

[Antoine Pitrou]

On Sun, 28 Oct 2012 18:24:36 +0000 (UTC)
Vinay Sajip <vinay_sajip at yahoo.co.uk> wrote:
> In some scenarios, configure produces a Makefile which fails because ASDLGEN
> doesn't point to a working Python. In particular, it seems to assume that if
> there is an executable called e.g. "python3.4" on the path, then that will be a
> system Python.
> 
> In my perhaps unusual but IMO perfectly valid setup, I have various Python repos
> set up like so:
> 
> $HOME/projects/python
>                  |
>                  +- default
>                  |
>                  +- 3.3
>                  |
>                  + and so on for 3.2, 3.1, 2.7
> 
> In order to facilitate testing some script against multiple Python versions, I
> have shell scripts in $HOME/bin named python3.4, python3.3 etc. which just run
> the programs in the relevant directories in $HOME/projects/python/. (I know I
> can do this using aliases etc., but I think that's beside the point.)
> 
> When I run configure in the repo for the default branch, it appears to look for
> a Python on the path named python3.4, finds one in $HOME/bin, and thus generates
> an ASDLGEN value of "python3.4". If I happen to have a built Python in the
> default repo, then the script in $HOME/bin will successfully run that, and all
> appears well; but if I clean the default repo and re-run make, it fails at the
> ASDLGEN step, because the $HOME/bin/python3.4 script fails, due to not being
> able to invoke $HOME/projects/python/default/python.
> 
> Is this a bug in configure, or is my configuration regarded as too perverse to
> support?

The latter IMO :)

Regards

Antoine.