My only complaint about Python

[Bengt Richter]

On Fri, 20 Aug 2004 15:19:01 -0400, Tim Peters <tim.peters at gmail.com> wrote:

>[Darren Dale]
>...
>>>> Will the BDFL ever split with Visual Studio?
>
>[Tim Peters]
>>> We should be clear here that this isn't Guido's decision.  What you
>>> get on Windows is what you get on all other platforms in this respect:
>>>  you get what volunteers show up to produce, year after year after
>>> year.  So you get a fine Cygwin port from Jason Tishler, seemingly
>>> toiling all alone, and you get contributions from at least four
>>> developers who do use Visual Studio.
>
>[Darren]
>> I meant no disrespect to the developers.
>
>Didn't think you did.  I'm just saying (a) the BDFL is irrelevant to
>this particular issue; and, (b) you get what other people give.  If
>nobody with a long-term commitment to a specific Visual Studio
>alternative appears, then #b rules.
>
>> ...
>> This comes back to the heart of the matter. How do you get volunteers
>> who dont have access to VS to get involved with Python development?
>
>Very few Python contributors have access to VS, but it doesn't matter
>since most aren't running on Windows either.  Even on Windows, VS is
>usually irrelevant to whether somene can pitch in on reviewing bugs
>and patches, improving the standard libraries, improving the docs,
>helping on the newsgroup and mailing lists, keeping python.org
>healthy, etc.  I think it's more of a cultural thing, that Windows
>users typically have a lower contribution rate than users on other
>platforms (whether it's C code or anything else).
>
>I mentioned Cygwin before, and you can certainly develop C extension
>modules, for Python, on Windows, using that.  Other responders have
>their own favored VS alternatives.  "A problem" is that there's more
>than one VS alternative!  That fragments the relatively-small-anyway
>community of people who need a VS alternative on Windows.
>
>> I think the suggestions here were right on, give Python the ability to
>> support MinGW out of the box.
>
>That's a wish.  If it's to be granted, someone has to volunteer to do
>the work initially, and keep it working as the years go by.  Don't
>expect that one of the current contributors will do so (they're
>swamped already).  IOW, it's not a matter of convincing someone it's a
>good idea, it's a matter of someone volunteering to do actual, real
>work.
>
>> I thought that a compiler could even be included in a version of the Windows
>> distribution, but maybe that is taking it too far.
>
>That one won't happen -- most Windows Python users don't even know C,
>and download size is still an issue for many.  Even people who want to
>work on core Python development on Windows using VS need to work from
>a source tarball instead, or from a CVS checkout.

Has anyone considered treating a current binary windows cpython distro like 2.3 as
a bootstrap, using a python script to control (e.g. via os and urllib etc) all the downloading
and md5/pgp-sig checking and building necessary to create an msys/MinGW installation
(as needed if not present) and then a python built from sources purely using msys/MinGW,
with end result being a python installation ready to be used in parallel, or to be switched
to as default?

It might take hours to download and crunch, and it might need to be re-startable
and be based on an evolving checkpointable config file of preferences etc, but why not?

If someone then wanted to make a script repackaging the result as a binary installation,
that would be handy too, and IWT some official versions of everything would wind up on python.org
after a while.

IMO a python script that created the whole thing from sources (well, ok, not including bootstrapping
msys/MingGW totally from sources ;-) would be a useful DOCUMENT as well as a tool. IOW, spreading
bot-knowledge can distribute the knowledge necessary to distributing the volunteer workload of
maintaining and improving the thing. I'm thinking simple text UI control as necessary.

Such a migration bootstrap script seems to me like it would have more robust survival prospects than
an equivalent-end-result prebuilt binary distro made ad hoc by hand and contributed.

Seems like someone must have thought of this before. I guess pieces exist as .bat or .cmd files,
but I'd like to see the whole thing wrapped in a single flexible python script.

Regards,
Bengt Richter