[Distutils] patch to unixccompiler.py

[Greg Ward]

On 01 February 2000, Joe Van Andel said:
> I've encountered a situation where I'd like to be able to over-ride the
> default compiler used by distutils.  I have an extension which requires
> a newer version of gcc than I used to build python.
> 
>  The following patch uses the value of the CC environment variable to
> override the default.  I'd like to see this in the next version of
> distutils, if possible:

Hmm.  I'm a bit leery of introducing environment variables into the user
interface; they're prone to action-at-a-distance and unintended
consequence.  However, it would be convenient to be able to adopt the
time-honoured idiom of

  CC=foo_cc make

to

  CC=foo_cc python setup.py build

I think the proper way to do it would be to add an option to the
build_ext command, so you'd have to do something like this:

  python setup.py build_ext --compiler=foo_cc

(This might also be a good way to override compiler flags -- add a
"--compiler-flags" option.)  This would require rather more code than
Joe's tiny little patch, though.

> *** unixccompiler.orig  Sun Dec 12 09:57:47 1999
> --- unixccompiler.py    Tue Feb  1 13:58:39 2000
> ***************
> *** 22,27 ****
> --- 22,32 ----
>   from copy import copy
>   from sysconfig import \
>        CC, CCSHARED, CFLAGS, OPT, LDSHARED, LDFLAGS, RANLIB, AR, SO
> + import os
> + tcc = os.environ.get('CC')
> + if tcc:
> +       CC=tcc
> + 
>   from ccompiler import CCompiler, gen_preprocess_options,
> gen_lib_options
>   from util import move_file, newer_pairwise, newer_group

Anyone have strong feelings one way or the other about accepting this
patch and making environment variables a part of the Distutils user
interface?

        Greg

-- 
Greg Ward - software developer                    gward@cnri.reston.va.us
Corporation for National Research Initiatives    
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