[Python-Dev] Unable to build regex module against Python 3.5 32-bit

[Paul Moore]

On 26 May 2015 at 13:55, Steve Dower <Steve.Dower at microsoft.com> wrote:
> The builds I am responsible for include it because someone reported an issue
> and was persistent and helpful enough that I fixed it for them.
>
> That said, until MinGW agrees on a stable branch/version/fork, there seems
> to be a good chance that the shipped lib won't work for some people. If this
> is what's happened here, I see it as a good enough reason to stop shipping
> the lib and to add instructions on generating it instead (the gendef/dlltool
> dance).

Agreed. If shipping it helps, then great. If it's going to cause bug
reports, let's go back to the status quo of not having it. The
instructions for generating it were in the old distutils docs, now
removed in the cleanup / redirection to packaging.python.org. I'm
inclined to just leave it undocumented - the people who need it know
how to do it or can find it, whereas documenting the process implies a
level of support that we're not yet really able to provide.

Let's wait to see what the OP comes back with before making a final
decision. I see a few questions:

1. Does using distutils work (as opposed to the quoted manual compile steps)?
2. Does using whatever process he used in the past to generate
libpythonXY.a result in a working version?

https://docs.python.org/2.7/install/index.html#gnu-c-cygwin-mingw
suggests using pexports rather than gendef. I don't know if that could
produce a different result, but I can't see how... It also implicitly
assumes you're using dlltool from the toolchain you'll be building
with rather than using -m. Again, I can't see why that would affect
the results.

Paul.