[Python-Dev] API for the new sysconfig module

[Antoine Pitrou]

On Fri, 10 Dec 2010 12:27:26 -0800
Raymond Hettinger <raymond.hettinger at gmail.com> wrote:
> 
> IMO, sysconfig did not warrant a whole module.

Where would you put it?

> Rather than using two levels of dictionary, it's also possible
> to use a named tuple if you think that is more clean looking:
> 
>    >>> c = sys.sysconfig()             
>    >>> c.config_vars.get('SO)
>    '.pyd'

Some of these things are computed at runtime by parsing makefiles and
other stuff. You don't want to do it as soon as the module is imported.
There may also be some bootstrap issues when importing some of the
necessary modules from the top level.

The current API is fine IMO. Perhaps it could be refined a bit, but
there's nothing horrendous. It's not for everyone to use; creating
dict-like classes over these APIs would be a terrible waste of time,
and add a useless maintenance burden.

> If those functions were already public in distutils, it is trivial
> to write an adapter for them there.

The whole point was to separate them from distutils.

Regards

Antoine.