[Python-ideas] size of the installation of Python on mobile devices

[Xavier de Gaye]

On 08/02/2016 11:09 AM, Stephen J. Turnbull wrote:
 > Nick Coghlan writes:
 >  > On 1 August 2016 at 15:46, Stephen J. Turnbull
 >  > <turnbull.stephen.fw at u.tsukuba.ac.jp> wrote:
 >  > > Victor Stinner writes:
 >  > >
 >  > >  > Xavier is a core developer.  He is free to dedicate his time to
 >  > >  > supporting sourceless distribution :-)
 >  > >
 >  > > So are we all, core or not.  But on Nick's terms (he even envisions
 >  > > releases with the "sourceless" build broken), I don't think adding to
 >  > > core is fair to Xavier's (and others') efforts in this direction.
 >  >
 >  > How would it be any different from our efforts to support other
 >  > platforms outside the primary set of Windows, Mac OS X, Linux, and
 >  > *BSD?
 >
 > This isn't platform support in the same sense, for one.  This is a
 > variant distribution mode.  A better analogy would be the common
 > packaging support we provide for RPMs, debs, and all the whatnots
 > associated with different Linux and *BSD distros.  AFAIK there is no
 > such support, rather we leave it up to the individual distros, which
 > mostly ignore our own packaging technologies (except where implied by
 > directory structure).  (OK, there's probably stuff in Tools that can
 > be applied to that, but all I see that's obvious is a *distribution-
 > specific* facility, Misc/RPM, which is regularly used.)

You are mistaken. There is already at least one feature of the Python
build system that fits exactly your analogy, it is called MULTIARCH.
It applies to all unix systems whether they support or not multiarch
(AFAIK archlinux, OS X, Android do not support multiarch). It is not a
minor change in Python build system, adding about 140 lines in
configure.ac and the add_multiarch_paths() function in setup.py.

Xavier