Haskell distutils-type system

[Donn Cave]

Quoth Isaac Jones <ijones at syntaxpolice.org>:
...
| One idea for this distribution system, which we're calling the Library
| Infrastructure Project, is to create a nice gmake-based build system,
| document it, and leave it at that.

If it can be plain make, instead of gmake, that would be closer
my idea of "nice".  That has been one of Python's strengths since
early on, easy to build on a variety of platforms and doesn't
impose gratuitous requirements like needing GNU make or Perl
(can you imagine?)

| ... Another idea is to use a
| Haskell-based Distutils type system.
...

| What about configuration, do you typically interface with autoconf
| somehow, or does distutils have its own way to figure out
| configuration details?

This is not one of distutils' strengths.  I think the answer to both
is "no" - there isn't any useful interface to autoconf, and it doesn't
have a comparable ability to figure out configuration details.  The
path of least resistance would probably be something analogous to
config.h.in, a config.hs.in that allows autoconfig to account for all
the options and environmental variables.

	Donn Cave, donn at drizzle.com