[Python-Dev] Evaluated cmake as an autoconf replacement (original) (raw)

David Cournapeau cournape at gmail.com
Tue Apr 7 15:08:38 CEST 2009

On Tue, Apr 7, 2009 at 9:14 PM, <skip at pobox.com> wrote:

 Ondrej> ... while scons and other Python solutions imho encourage to  Ondrej> write full Python programs, which imho is a disadvantage for the  Ondrej> build system, as then every build system is nonstandard. Hmmm...  Like distutils setup scripts?

fortunately, waf and scons are much better than distutils, at least for the build part :)

I think it is hard to overestimate the importance of a python solution for python softwares (python itself is different). Having a full fledged language for complex builds is nice, I think most familiar with complex makefiles would agree with this.

I don't know thing one about cmake, but if it's good for the goose (building Python proper) would it be good for the gander (building extensions)?

For complex softwares, specially ones relying on lot of C and platform idiosyncrasies, distutils is just too cumbersome and limited. Both Ondrej and me use python for scientific usage, and I think it is no hazard that we both look for something else. In those cases, scons - and cmake it seems - are very nice; build tools are incredibly hard to get right once you want to manage dependencies automatically.

For simple python projects (pure python, a few .c source files without much dependencies), I think it is just overkill.

cheers,

David

-- Skip Montanaro - skip at pobox.com - http://www.smontanaro.net/  "XML sucks, dictionaries rock" - Dave Beazley

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