[Python-Dev] python 2 for building python 3

[Mark Dickinson]

On Sat, Dec 4, 2010 at 1:23 PM, Mark Dickinson <dickinsm at gmail.com> wrote:
> On Sat, Dec 4, 2010 at 11:41 AM, Antoine Pitrou <solipsis at pitrou.net> wrote:
>> Er, normally you don't need *any* Python installed to build Python (be
>> it 3.x or 2.x).
>
> Are you sure about this?  I remember needing an existing Python to
> building Python 2.7 on a new python-less install of FreeBSD a couple
> of months ago.  But maybe that was just an issue with timestamps on
> files.  I'll see if I can reproduce.

With a fresh checkout of the release27-maint branch on an Ubuntu
64-bit VM, with /usr/bin/python renamed to /usr/bin/python_not_here, a
'./configure && make' fails with:

[...]
checking for socklen_t... yes
checking for build directories... done
configure: creating ./config.status
config.status: creating Makefile.pre
config.status: creating Modules/Setup.config
config.status: creating Misc/python.pc
config.status: creating Modules/ld_so_aix
config.status: creating pyconfig.h
creating Modules/Setup
creating Modules/Setup.local
creating Makefile
./Parser/asdl_c.py -h ./Include ./Parser/Python.asdl
/usr/bin/env: python: No such file or directory
make: *** [Include/Python-ast.h] Error 127

I think this is the same problem that I saw on the FreeBSD VM.

Mark