How to install Python package from source on Windows

[Gregory Ewing]

bartc wrote:
> Compiling a C file should be nothing at all. Especially of a known, 
> working program.

Writing reasonably portable C is feasible, as long as you don't
use any platform-specific system calls or libraries, don't do any
low-level bit twiddling that depends on data sizes and endianness,
don't take advantage of compiler-specific features for speed, etc.

Python does all of those things in spades. That's why it needs
so many #ifdefs.

> It's when you 
> get a preponderance of #includes, #defined, #ifs, #ifdefs and #errors, 
> especially in headers, that it becomes taxing to try and follow.

I fully agree that such code is hard to follow. But it's hard to
see how to do any better, given that Python needs to work in such
a diverse set of environments.

I also happen to agree that the way the configuration system is
implemented, based on a mishmash of shell scripting and m4 macros,
is very difficult to follow for someone not deeply involved in its
development. Anyone else more or less needs to treat it as a black
box.

Possibly the implementation could be improved. Something written
in Python could probably be made clearer, although that would lead
to a bootstrapping problem. But however it's done, the underlying
complexity will remain, and dealing with that is never going to
be a piece of cake.

-- 
Greg