[Distutils] Questions about distutils strategy

[Mark Hammond]

> unless & until I want to run under the debugger.  Goodness,
> you can even use
> the DevStudio Build -> Start Debug -> Attach to Process ...
> menu item to
> start debugging an arbitrary process already running on the
> system

Or use the NT task manager and select "Debug" when right-clicking on a
process.

Or, for Python programmers, add a quick "win32api.DebugBreak()" call.

> ian-will-figure-out-how-to-use-devstudio-long-before-you'll-figure-
>     out-how-to-automate-it-ly y'rs  - tim

Ahh - but we already have - David's compile.py knows how to use COM to
automate DevStudio builds :-)  In fact, with the COM extensions we
could create and build a DevStudio project from scratch I believe.
But I dont think we should.

Just to echo the rest of the articles in this thread:

* If someone uses DevStudio to build their apps, it is likely they are
targetting Windows only, so distutils is unlikely to offer great
advantages.  It will be a long time indeed before you can release
source code for Windows apps under the assumption that all systems
have a C compiler available to build it.

* If per chance they _are_ also targetting Unix, then they must also
be maintaining seperate Unix build scripts - still no loss here - move
the Unix stuff to distutils and either leave DevStudio alone, or move
to make based builds in Windows too.  Still the users choice, and
nothing to lose from what they currently do - only possibly things to
gain if they go that route.

* As Guido mentioned, on any platform, they should be able to get an
extension building in almost no time (just like compile.py pretty-much
does now).  Windows users in this category are unlikely to be
DevStudio wizards, so it is still a win for them.

In a nutshell, I cant see _any_ good reasons to offer DevStudio
support to distutils.

Mark.