[Python-ideas] size of the installation of Python on mobile devices

[Xavier de Gaye]

On 07/30/2016 04:42 PM, Nick Coghlan wrote:
 > On 30 July 2016 at 22:29, M.-A. Lemburg <mal at egenix.com> wrote:
 >> IMO, this should all be left to packagers. They will have to
 >> patch the code base anyway to get things working in such
 >> an environment, so there isn't much point in adding some
 >> bits to the configure script which everyone uses, while
 >> leaving out other important parts. This doesn't simplify
 >> the life of packagers much, but does add maintenance
 >> overhead for the core developers (since these new options
 >> would have to be tested as well before release).
 >>
 >> BTW: By not having these options in configure, you also
 >> gain a lot more freedom as packager, since you can have
 >> the build behave you would like it to instead of going
 >> through the whole change request discussion process that
 >> updates/changes to these options would entail going
 >> forward.
 >
 > Encouraging that divergence isn't free, though - it just pushes the
 > testing burden outward by creating a larger compatibility testing
 > matrix for folks wanting to support sourceless environments.
 >
 > And, to be clear, I'm not suggesting we start making official
 > sourceless releases of CPython, nor am I suggesting we make
 > "sourceless builds are working" a gating criterion for versioned
 > releases - instead, I'm suggesting we allow interested folks like
 > Xavier to add the basic knobs and dials to the standard distribution,
 > with the awareness that they might break sometimes and requiring
 > patching after other folks make changes. Since the assumption is that
 > folks interested in this will be building from source anyway, it
 > shouldn't be a problem to run directly off a maintenance branch when
 > they need to, rather than using a particular release tag.


Then I propose that we vote to allow issue 26852 [1] to add the
'--enable-sourceless-distribution' option to configure.

I am +1 for the reasons given in my previous posts.

Xavier

[1] http://bugs.python.org/issue26852