[Python-Dev] Re: Snake-Pit: Cataloging Python builds on different platforms

[Nick Monyatovsky]

>------------------- Message from Christopher Blunck --------------------
>
>  Snake-pit is a simple shell script that does all of this for you - it
>  checks out the Python source code anonymously, builds it, tests it, and
>  produces pretty output:
>  [chris at titan snake-pit]$ ./build.sh
>  Processing branch: main
>  Downloading code... done.
>  Building: clean, configure, compile.
>  Testing... done.
>  Results:
>              Failed:  1
>             Skipped:  32
>    Skips Unexpected:  2
>              Passed:  239
>
>              Failed:  test_repr
>
>
>  What I'd like to do is begin catalog'ing this information on a nightly basis
>  on different platforms.  The goal is:  at any given time, we'll know which
>  platforms Python has been compiled and tested on.  After the information
>  has been catalog'ed, we can do a variety of transformations of it - we can
>  post it on a webpage or mail it to a listserve (if an error occurs).
>
>
>  I'm writing to solicit feedback for what information would be useful to
capture
>  from a Python build.  So far I'm planning on capturing:
>    Platform Category (Linux, BSD, Solaris)
>    Distribution (RedHat, FreeBSD, Solaris)
>    Version (9.0, 5.2.1, 9)
>    Kernel (2.4.22-1.2174, ??, ??)
>    SMP?
>
>  I'm interested in any feedback (positive and negative) that anybody would be
>  willing to provide.  Is this fools gold, or is it something that could be
>  useful?  If useful, how could it be *very* useful?
>
>--------------------------------------------------------

This sounds great. The other items that matter a lot are these:

Architecture:       32-bit/64-bit/Itanium/Opteron/PowerPC/Sparc/etc...
Compiler & Version: GNU/Intel/etc...
Optimization Level: min/default/max
Threaded:           yes/no
Strictness Level:   min/default/max

We may also consider what to do about extensions. If the Python core compiles
and links, but if most of the extensions and useful modules are "skipped", it
needs to be known. Without those modules Python might be quite unusable.

-- Nick Monyatovsky -- mon at abaqus.com