Shrinky-dink Python (also, non-Unicode Python build is broken)

[Steven Bethard]

Larry Hastings wrote:
> Of course, it's not the most important thing in the world--after all,
> I'm the first person to even *notice*, right?  But it seems a shame
> that
> one can break the build so easily.  If it pleases the stewards of
> Python, I would be happy to submit patches that fix the non-"using
> Unicode" build.

There was a recent python-dev thread_ suggesting that we drop support 
for --disable-unicode, mainly I think because no one was willing to 
maintain it.  If you're willing to offer patches and some maintenance, 
it probably has a decent chance of acceptance.

.. _thread: 
http://mail.python.org/pipermail/python-dev/2005-October/056897.html

> So in order to build my *really* minimal python24.dll, I have to hack
> up the source something fierce.  It would be pleasant if the Python
> source code provided an easy facility for turning off modules at
> compile-time.  I would be happy to propose something / write a PEP
> / submit patches to do such a thing, if there is a chance that such
> a thing could make it into the official Python source.  However, I
> realize that this has terribly limited appeal; that, and the fact
> that Python releases are infrequent, makes me think it's not a
> terrible hardship if I had to re-hack up each new Python release
> by hand.

My impression is that, for most things like this, python-dev is happy to 
accept the patches *if* someone is willing to commit to maintaining 
them, and they don't make the codebase too much more complex.

STeVe