[Distutils] Configuration etc.

[Fred L. Drake]

Konrad Hinsen writes:
 > The build phase of the installation process (needed only for source
 > installation of extension modules, of course) should use a much
 > higher-level interface to the DistUtil core than just the information

  I agree; I think the expectation is a slightly higher level
interface than that: you provide something declarative, telling the
distutils package what your inputs are and what sort of module you
want to build.  And it does the rest.

 > Everything lower-level is an implementation detail and not worth
 > 10 KB of discussion ;-)

  Probably not, if someone gets to go off and do the whole thing.  I
think we're trying to share the load, though.
  And we just like email.  ;-)

 > I see no reason at all to store such specific data in a documented
 > standard library module, whatever it is called. It may even be better
 > not to store it at all and parse the original input every time the
 > information is needed.

  I'm fine with this.  It can just be distutils.sysconfig, have a
comment saying it's just an implementation detail, and ...

 > after all. It seems to me that the whole DistUtils project divides
 > nicely into two almost independent subunits:
 > 
 > - building binaries from source code
 > 
 > - installing Python modules and binary extension modules

  Good breakdown.  Each of these needs to consider at least three
platforms for the initial release: Unix, Windows, and Mac.

 > That said, I'll disappear for a two-week Christmas vacation, hoping
 > that the discussion during these two weeks won't fill up all my disk

  Hah!  Never leave your email unattended....  ;-)


  -Fred

--
Fred L. Drake, Jr.	     <fdrake@acm.org>
Corporation for National Research Initiatives
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