Problems Building Python under Cygwin

[Robert Kern]

In article <7vtath$n1j$1 at nnrp1.deja.com>, salvadorej at my-deja.com writes:
> I'm having some problems building Python under Cygwin on Windows NT 4.
> 
> 1) the first problem I had was relatively easy to deal with. Towards
> the end of the make process, there's a command to copy the python
> executable from the Modules directory. The problem is, the makefile
> expects to copy something called 'python', but the executable produced
> was 'python.exe' (presumably because I'm under Windows). So cp can't
> complete this command, and the makefile chokes. Fortunately, at this
> point, the make process is pretty much done, so all I had to do was go
> into the Modules directory, and copy python.exe to the directory above,
> and it worked. SO: did I mess up? Or is this something wrong with the
> makefile/configure setup that needs to be fixed?

There is a line in some of the Makefile's:

EXE=

Changing that to:

EXE=.exe

is what you should only need to do.  It's been a while since I did that, 
though, and I seem to remember that it did not solve all of the problems.
Anyways, the problem is probably moot; see below.

> 2) the second problem I haven't solved. What I really wanted Python for
> was to build Zope from scratch. 

Do you need to compile Zope statically into Python, or were you simply
constrained by the lack of MSVC?  If the latter, you do not need to compile
Python and Zope with Cygwin.  You can use mingw32 (using Mumit Khan's native
build, not the --mno-cygwin switch on Cygwin's compiler) to compile Zope's
extension modules and use them with the standard Win32 Python interpreter. 
I did it for one of the Zope 2 betas.

Se my page:
http://starship.python.net/crew/kernr/mingw32/Notes.html

for details.


--
Robert Kern
kern at caltech.edu

"In the fields of hell where the grass grows high
 are the graves of dreams allowed to die."
       -- Richard Harter