[Python-Dev] DRAFT: python-dev Summary for 2006-01-01 through 2006-01-15 (original) (raw)

Thomas Heller theller at python.net
Thu Jan 26 21:33:13 CET 2006

Ronald Oussoren <ronaldoussoren at mac.com> writes:

On Jan 26, 2006, at 9:22 AM, Ronald Oussoren wrote:

It shouldn't be too hard to use Python's main configure script to calculate the information necessary to build libffi. A lot of it is already calculated anyway (sizeof various type, endianness), some can be hardcoded (FFINORAWAPI).

In PyObjC I just compile the files I need from my setup.py. But I have an easy task, I just need to support two CPU architectures on one OS. Merging the two configure files might be a good idea anyway, that would take away the need to run configure from setup.py. IANAL, but I don't quite get how a GPL'd support script, if there is such a thing, in the build machinery of an extension library would require that Python itself is GPL'd. Anyhow, in my copy of libffi (a snapshot where the last entry in the Changelog is from 2004-04-26) the only the following files at the toplevel op libffi are GPL licensed: config.guess, config.sub, config-ml.in, ltcf-c.sh, ltconfig, ltmain.sh, missing. All of these contain an exception clause like this one in config.guess:

ctypes libffi is somewhat newer, around 2005-05-09.

# As a special exception to the GNU General Public License, if you # distribute this file as part of a program that contains a # configuration script generated by Autoconf, you may include it under # the same distribution terms that you use for the rest of that program.

I'd say that it should be save to include these in the Python distribution.

As I said in the other thread (where the discussion should probably be continued anyway):

http://mail.python.org/pipermail/python-dev/2006-January/060113.html

only aclocal.m4 isn't clear to me about the license. Anyway, it could be that this file isn't needed after all - I don't know enough about the GNU toolchain to be sure. Can anyone comment on this?

Neither do I know enough to merge the configure scripts. Contributions would really, really gratefully be accepted.

Thomas

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