[Distutils] Beginnings of a C/C++ compiler interface

[M.-A. Lemburg]

Ovidiu Predescu wrote:
> 
> As I already wrote in a previous post, I don't argue about the utility of a
> Python packager tool but about how useful would be to work on a configuration
> tool right now.
> 
> Some of the extensions that I wrote use configure to check for header files and
> library versions. These things are very well done by autoconf, and my point is
> that we probably don't need another tool to do this. What we need though is
> standard way to integrate configure in the process of building a package. In a
> normal C package that uses configure, this is done by running configure and
> then make. The question is how configure could be integrated with the distutils
> setup.py script? How are the configure options passed to it and what is the
> order of execution, first configure and then setup.py? Just wondering if this
> is reasonable...

Well, you are certainly right in saying that autoconf already
handles what I proposed in an earlier mail. OTOH, the distutils
package is intended to be cross-platform and the autoconf output
does not run on non-Unix platforms.

Given that the compiler interface provides an abstract interface
to the compiler (+ the linker) and its installation, it only
seems natural to use the interface to "try out some things"
much like the generated configure scripts do.

I don't want to reinvent a wheel here: most config setups are
very primitive and don't need the full-blown autoconf mechanisms.
Some more methods on the compiler interface would enable this
for those who want to use the feature, something like

.testcompile(program_string[,options])
.testcompileandlink(program_string[,options,libs])

which return 1/0 to state "success" / "failure" and implement
proper cleanup of the intermediate files. Very simple,
really no need to argue here, IMHO...

Cheers,
-- 
Marc-Andre Lemburg
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