Hosting Companies: Help for Python Users?

[Neil Hodgson]

Steve Holden:

> Dennis Lee Beiber:
> 
>  > Too many 3rd-party modules still aren't available in 2.5
>  > versions for my tastes...
> 
> This applies particularly (though not exclusively) to the Windows 
> platform, for various reasons -- the most common one is that Linux 
> developers frequently don't have a Windows machine available to help 
> them test their builds and ensure that distributions are available.
> 
> I am trying to address this problem, initially by making hosted Windows 
> machines available for use as buildbots. 

    I'd like to see this integrated in the Cheese Shop. I recently 
released a small extension class and provided a source distribution and 
a single binary for Python 2.5 on Windows. While I have the compilers 
needed for building back to 1.5, most people don't and even when you do 
it is complex to set up an environment for each version to compile 
successfully.

    It would be great if you could upload a source distribution and mark 
it as containing files that need compilation for each version - or a 
subset of versions if you know it requires particular features. Then the 
compilation is farmed out to machines set up for each Python version and 
when the compilation is finished, a status display shows the set that 
are available and which failed along with a link to see the compilation 
log. A unit test could be optionally included in an upload that would 
contribute to whether the build is marked good.

    Neil