no, the above subject-line is not a joke: i really _have_ successfully built python2.5.2 by installing wine on linux, then msys under wine, and then mingw32 compiler - no, not the linux mingw32-cross-compiler, the _native_ mingw32 compiler that runs under msys, and then hacking things into submission until it worked.
issue-report: http://bugs.python.org/issue4954 source code: http://github.com/lkcl/pythonwine/tree/python_2.5.2_wine related issue-report: http://bugs.python.org/issue3871 related issue-report: http://bugs.python.org/issue1597850 i'm going to _try_ to merge in #3871 but it's... the prospect of sitting waiting for configure to take THREE hours to complete, due to /bin/sh.exe instances taking TWO SECONDS _each_ to start up does not really fill me with deep joy. consequently i did a major hatchet-job on configure.in with repeated applications of "if test $win32build = no; then" ... cue several hundred lines of configure.in tests blatantly ignored "fi # $win32build=no! " and thus cut the configure time down from three hours to a mere 15 minutes. the only reason why this was possible at all was because PC/config.h already exists and has been pre-set-up with lots of lovely #defines. also, there is another significant difference between #3871 and #4954 - i chose to build in to libpython2.5.dll exactly as many modules as are in the proprietary win32 build. this turned out to be a good practical decision, due to /bin/sh.exe messing around and stopping python.exe from running! (under cmd.exe it's fine. i have to do a bit more investigation: my guess is that the msys "remounter" is getting in the way, somehow. compiling python to have a prefix of /python25 results in files being installed in /python25 which maps to c:/msys/python25/ but.... actually that doesn't get communicated correctly to the compiled python.exe.... it's all a bit odd - it still feels like things are being cross-compiled... but they're not... it's just that setup.py has paths that don't _quite_ match up with the msys environment... needs work, there. the regression testing is _great_ fun! some of the failures are really quite spectacular, but surprisingly there are less than anticipated. file "sharing violation" isn't a big surprise (under wine); the ctypes structure failures are going to be a bitch to hunt down; the test_str %f failure _was_ a big surpise; the builtin file \r\n <-> \n thing wasn't in the _least_ bit of a surprise :) overall, this has been... interesting. and the key thing is that thanks to #3871 and #4954 and #1597850, python will soon happily compile for win32 _without_ the dependence on _any_ proprietary software or operating systems. that's a pretty significant milestone. l. p.s. if anyone would like to try out this build, on a windows box, to see if it fares any better on the regression tests please say so and i will make the binaries available. -- http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list
