[PythonCE] Building under Visual Studio 2005 for Devices

[Luke Dunstan]

----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Michael Foord" <fuzzyman at voidspace.org.uk>
To: <christopher at christec.co.nz>
Cc: <pythonce at python.org>
Sent: Tuesday, March 06, 2007 5:57 AM
Subject: Re: [PythonCE] Building under Visual Studio 2005 for Devices


> Christopher Fairbairn wrote:
>> Hi,
>>
>> I am keen to start contributing to the Windows CE/Windows Mobile port of 
>> Python. I
>> have a lot of commerical development experience in this environment.
>>
>> I would like to understand the build process for Python in a lot more 
>> detail than I
>> currently do. I thought an ideal way to do this would be to have a goal 
>> of making
>> PythonCE compilable under Visual Studio 2005.
>>
>> Is anyone able to give me any starting tips on how I might approch this? 
>> Should I
>> look at modifying the SCONS scripts to be able to detect and make use of 
>> Visual
>> Studio 2005 instead of EVC, or should I go the route used by the PCBuild 
>> and
>> PCBuild8 directories (i.e. desktop versions) where (I assume) someone has 
>> manually
>> created a bunch of suitable project and solution files?
>>
>>
> PythonCE is a port of the standard CPython project.
>
> As it happens there is thread going on *right now* on the Python-dev
> mailing list on what it takes to make CPython compilable with VS 2005.
>
> The same techniques would have to be applied to the PythonCE project
> which is essentially just a patched version of vanilla CPython.
>
> Worth browsing the Python-dev mailing archives for this month...
>
> Fuzzyman
> http://www.voidspace.org.uk/python/index.shtml

If it is possible to modify the PCBuild8 project files so that Python can be 
built for both desktop Windows and Windows CE then yes, this may well be the 
simplest option. However, if Windows CE would require separate project files 
then I think it would be better to adapt the SCons scripts.

For your information, PythonCE 2.4 had two build systems: primarily a set of 
nmake makefiles and a secondary set of EVC 4 project files as an 
alternative. I replaced these with SCons because it is more powerful, more 
automated and easier to maintain (less redundancy) than makefiles, and far 
more powerful and flexible than project files.

Luke