wxPython building woes

[Alex Martelli]

"Alex Martelli" <alex at magenta.com> wrote in message
news:8mr1fc01b6s at news2.newsguy.com...
    [snip]
> Yes, it should work just fine.  I'm doing it at home, not here at work,
but
> this evening the fix will/should be easy.

That one was -- but just brought to light _another_ configuration
problem: include directories.  The directory set with -I is
wx2\include, which just contains a further subdir wx; this is
mostly OK, as the sources #include <wx\whatever.h>, BUT one
place wants to #include <config.h> instead, NOT <wx\config.h>.

So I rooted around until I found the place where the include
dirs were defined (not trivial), added wx2\include\wx too --
and boom, some #include <string.h> now bomb out getting the
file of that name in include\wx rather than the system header
file of the same name.

So I backtracked the change and looked again at who it was
that wanted config.h.  Aha, it's not a wxsomething: it's
Python.h, in \Python\include.  And apparently _its_ config.h
is in \Python\PC.  How do I set _that_ in build.local? Trash
around for an hour, give up, hack it right into build.py --
noticing a hardcoded reference there to python15.lib, hack
that one too, just in case I ever get anything to compile.

Try again, bombing this time with:
D:\MSDEV6\VC98\INCLUDE\wchar.h(700) : error C2733: second C linkage of
overloade
d function 'wmemchr' not allowed
        D:\MSDEV6\VC98\INCLUDE\wchar.h(699) : see declaration of 'wmemchr'
etc etc for the following lines.  So somebody is including
wchar.h within an #include "C" block within a .cpp file.

Who what which where?  Go tell.  If I was within the much
maligned IDE, I would know what it's trying to compile at
that point, at least; but I'm not, I'm in a nightmare of
scripts and textfiles and makefiles and who knows what else.


It must be me, I guess.  But the contrast between the build
of huge wxWindows itself (a snap, not a comma to touch, all
within the IDE) and the nightmare of wxPython (hours and
hours poured trying to understand what's going on, and still
failing) sort of suggests to me that this IDE-avoidance may
not necessarily be the optimal approach to Visual C++ builds.
Oh well.

Does anybody have a successful binary build of wxPython for
Python 1.6b1 under Win/98?  And is willing to share either the
DLL or the various pieces of configuration-etc-file magic that
let it be built...?


Alex