[Python-Dev] Compiling Python with Python (original) (raw)

Chris Angelico rosuav at gmail.com
Wed Jun 5 22:19:55 CEST 2013

On Thu, Jun 6, 2013 at 6:00 AM, Jussi Pakkanen <jpakkane at gmail.com> wrote:

On Wed, Jun 5, 2013 at 10:37 PM, Chris Angelico <rosuav at gmail.com> wrote:

Since you're talking about a bootstrap requirement here, the obvious question is: What version of Python 3 does it require? Will it be a lot of hassle to get hold of (say) Python 3.2, only to uninstall it when you have your 3.4 built? The implementation does not use deep Python magic such as C extensions or the like so it should work with future releases of Python. The current version requires 3.3 or newer but only because it uses a couple of pythonlib functions that were added at 3.3. Changing it to work with 3.2 or earlier should not be a big task.

Newer versions shouldn't be a problem, older ones will. I'm mainly thinking about systems that can't just casually apt-get a Python 3.3. With Ubuntu, most people probably don't even need to worry about building from source, as there'll be a decently-recent Python in the repo; but what happens when you're on Debian Squeeze and the only Python 3 you can get is 3.1.3? Even Wheezy (the current stable Debian) comes with only 3.2.

I do like the symmetry of using Python to build Python. But I also like using Python 3.3+ for everything, and not having to support the older Pythons. Unfortunately those two capacities clash, my lords, they clash!

ChrisA

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