How to install Python package from source on Windows

bartc bc at freeuk.com
Sat May 20 14:11:22 EDT 2017


On 20/05/2017 17:49, Chris Angelico wrote:
> On Sat, May 20, 2017 at 8:46 AM, Viktor Hagström
> <viktor.hagstrom at outlook.com> wrote:
>> I have followed this discussion since the beginning, and I have been intrigued. I recently read a relevant blog post that I'd like to share. It has arguments for both sides: http://nullprogram.com/blog/2017/03/30/.

> Truly portable code either targets the lowest common denominator,
> which means avoiding any sort of file system processing or any
> features not in C89, or has multiple branches. That's the only two
> ways to do it.

Why avoid file processing? Standard C has long had fopen and fclose, and 
a handful of other functions (basically to read files and to write 
them). You don't need much else.

That blog link also had a reader comment that included these remarks:

"CMake and other tools that build build-configuration projects are 
overly complex and are an impediment to the software development cycle. 
They hide details like compile and link options, or make you use their 
language/syntax to express those options, and don't help you avoid 
os-dependent configuration issues."

It goes on [after Cmake was replaced]:

"A fresh build would run in a couple of minutes instead of 17 minutes. 
If no changes are made, it would take Visual Studio and Cmake 20-30 
seconds to determine there was nothing to build. Now it takes a split 
second.

...Keep the build as simple as possible."

(Which is exactly what I strive to do. Although my projects are small, 
they could still involve dozens of source and support files, and require 
running non-standard tools to build, which would then require other sets 
of sources to built those.

It still doesn't work though because you can get down to just a single 
file, and people will still moan that it's too complex. You've reduced 
the job of building a set of kitchen units to hammering in just one 
nail, but then find that someone has never hammered a nail in before.

I'm now investigating how to reduce a project to no files at all!)

-- 
bartc



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