[Python-Dev] Platform extension for distutils on other interpreters than CPython

[Tarek Ziadé]

On Tue, Feb 23, 2010 at 2:03 PM, Daniel Stutzbach
<daniel at stutzbachenterprises.com> wrote:
> On Tue, Feb 23, 2010 at 12:50 PM, Maciej Fijalkowski <fijall at gmail.com>
> wrote:
>>
>> I would like to have a feature on platform module (or sys or
>> somewhere) that can tell distutils or distutils2 that this platform
>> (be it PyPy or Jython) is not able to compile any C module. The
>> purpose of this is to make distutils bail out in more reasonable
>> manner than a compilation error in case this module is not going to
>> work on anything but CPython.
>
> Also, it would be nice if the package could tell distutils that the
> compilation is option, in order to support modules where the C version
> simply replaces functions for speed.

There's an option called "optional" in the Extension class right now
that will silent any compilation failures (like gcc not being there),
so your project still installs.

That's basically what people now can use when they have a pure Python
fallback version they
want to provide in case the C version cannot be built for any reason.

Tarek


-- 
Tarek Ziadé | http://ziade.org