Re: Improving the Python build system.

[Andreas Enge]

On Mon, Aug 26, 2013 at 01:29:48AM +0200, Cyril Roelandt wrote:
> Andreas, could you please send us your Python modules that fail
> because of setuptools ? I think these packages require setuptools
> instead of distutils (which comes with Python), so we'll probably
> have to package setuptools. Both are quite similar, so the
> "python-build-system" can probably be used anyway. Otherwise, we'll
> have to write a build system per tool
> (distutils/distutils2/setuptools/bento).

Probably (once the python changes dust settles), it will be enough to simply
add setuptools as an input to the packages.

I would like to suggest a few modifications to the python build system
resulting from discussions with Brandon Invergo at the GHM. If I understood
correctly, then "setup.py check" only makes some basic checks on the package
and can be safely dropped. This is corroborated by
   python setup.py --help-commands | grep check
on pytz, for instance, which displays
   check             perform some checks on the package

However, "python setup.py --help-commands | grep test":
   test              run unit tests after in-place build
I think this it what we would like to do in the check phase.

Then it is possible to also separate the build and install phases:
   build             build everything needed to install

I think we would like to add such a phase.

Stylistically, they should probably be obtained by a call to one function
returning a procedure calling setup.py with "build", "test" and "install",
respectively, instead of copy-pasting three times the same code.

There is another mild complication: The binary should be called "python3"
instead of "python" under Python 3.

What do you think?

Andreas