updated version of David Ascher's compile.py?

[Alex Martelli]

"Thomas Heller" <thomas.heller at ion-tof.com> wrote in message
news:01e901c00e8b$934576a0$4500a8c0 at thomasnb...
> Note that nowadays the easiest way to build an extension
> may be to write a distutils setup script,
> and then do 'setup.py build_ext'.
> This will automatically get it right, you can also
> build a debug version, and there are other benefits as well.

OK, I'm quite willing to try -- particularly since even
the 0.3 version of compile.py (thanks to E. van Sebille
for mailing it to me) gives me just the same defect as
the previous one: builds a .DSP for VC++5, and my VC++6
crashes while trying to convert it.

To learn how to write a distutils setup script, I thought
the easiest way would be to zoom in on a relevant example
(I'm supposed to have the distutils already installed,
since I have Python 1.6, right?  Unfortunately, I can't
find anything about it in the docs that came with my
download, so I went to the SIG's website).  distutils
is not in the modules-list in the docs, but
    from distutils.core import setup
does apparently work, so, some docs is hopefully all I need.

Unfortunately,
http://www.python.org/sigs/distutils-sig/doc/dist/single-ext.html
appears as totally content-free except for the
"7.3 Single extension module" title.  Same for the other
examples.  Other parts of that online doc do seem OK (as
far as I can see); do I just study those docs, without
benefits of examples, or is there somewhere that I can
find better/more complete/more up-to-date docs...?  Thanks!


Alex