EXTERNAL: Re: missing python-config and building python on Windows

[Damon Register]

On 7/31/2012 11:49 PM, Mark Hammond wrote:
> On 1/08/2012 10:48 AM, Damon Register wrote:
>> 1. though I have looked in a few readme files, I don't see instructions for
>>     installing what I have just built using MSVC.  Where can I find the
>>     instructions for installing after building with MSVC?
>
> There is no such process.  In general, you can just run directly from the built tree.
That is a bummer.  That makes me more curious about how the Windows
installer was made and how all the pieces were gathered together.

> I'm afraid I don't know what python-config is.  It appears it might be a reflection of how Python
> was configured and build on *nix systems - if that is the case then it is expected that one does not
> exist for Windows (as it doesn't use the *nix build chain).
which means, I guess, that mingw is barely supported if at all.
While it may be Windows, mingw/msys is a nice way to build many
programs that are unix oriented.  I suppose that just for fun I
should try to build python on SuSE to see how it goes.

>> 3. It seems that MSVC doesn't produce the .a library files needed for
>> linking
>>     into a mingw built program.  Do I have to do that fun trick to
>> create the
>>     .a from the dll?
>
> I'm surprised MSVC *can* build .a files for mingw - but AFAIK, even if MSVC could do that, I believe
> Python makes no attempt to build with support for linking into mingw programs.
I don't know that MSVC can do this.  The only process of which I am aware is a
two step process using pexports and dlltool to generate the .a file from a dll.
One reason I was using the python.org installer is that it already had the
python27.a file.  Now I am even more curious about what was used to build python
and create that installer.

The python.org installer provided all I needed for build most python dependent
apps with mingw until I ran into one that needed python-config.  I suppose that
if python-config does what I suspect it does (produce cflags and ldflags as
does pkg-config) then perhaps I could just fake it by replacing use of
python-config with what the cflags and ldflags should be for where I have
python.

Damon Register