On Fri, Feb 26, 2016 at 6:55 PM, Alexander Walters <tritium-l...@sdamon.com> wrote:
> No. > > Visual Studio is a solid compiler suit, mingw is a jenky mess, especially > when you try and move to 64bit (where I don't think there is one true > version of mingw). I'm sorry that Visual Studio makes it very hard for you > to contribute, but changing THE compiler of the distribution from the > platform compiler, especially when we FINALLY got a stable abi with it, is > going to be a non starter. > > Compiling on MinGW for your own edification is fine, but that's not the > build platform for windows python, nor should it be. Contributions are, and > should continue to be, tested against Visual Studio. > > > On 2/26/2016 05:12, Mathieu Dupuy wrote: > >> Hi. >> I am currently working on adding some functionality on a standard >> library module (http://bugs.python.org/issue15873). The Python part >> went fine, but now I have to do the C counterpart, and I have ran into >> in several problems, which, stacked up, are a huge obstacle to easily >> contribute further. Currently, despite I could work, I can't go >> further >> on my patch. >> >> I am currently working in very limited network, CPU and time >> ressources* which are quite uncommon in the western world, but are >> much less in the rest of the world. I have a 2GB/month mobile data >> plan and a 100KB/s speed. For the C part of my patch, I should >> download Visual Studio. The Express Edition 2015 is roughly 9GB. I >> can't afford that. >> >> I downloaded Virtualbox and two Linux netinstall (Ubuntu 15.10 and >> Fedora 23). Shortly, I couldn't get something working quickly and >> simply (quickly = less than 2 hours, downloading time NOT included, >> which is anyway way too already much). What went wrong and why it went >> wrong could be a whole new thread and is outside of the scope of this >> message. >> Let me precise this : at my work I use many virtualbox instances >> automatically fired and run in parallel to test new deployments and >> run unittests. I like this tool, >> but despite its simple look, it (most of the time) can not be used >> simply by a profane. The concepts it requires you to understand are >> not intuitive at first sight and there is *always* a thing that go >> wrong (guest additions, mostly).(for example : Ubuntu and Virtualbox >> shipped for a moment a broken version of mount.vboxsf, preventing >> sharing folder to mount. Despite it's fixed, the broken releases >> spread everywhere and you may encounter them a lot in various Ubuntu >> and Virtualbox version. I downloaded the last versions of both and I >> am yet infected. https://www.virtualbox.org/ticket/12879). I could do >> whole new thread on why you can't ask newcomers to use Virtualbox >> (currently, at least). >> >> I ran into is a whole patch set to make CPython compile on MinGW >> (https://bugs.python.org/issue3871#msg199695). But it is not denying >> it's very experimental, and I know I would again spent useless hours >> trying to get it work rather than joyfully improving Python, and >> that's exactly what I do not want to happen. >> >> Getting ready to contribute to CPython pure python modules from an >> standard, average mr-everyone Windows PC for a beginner-to-medium >> contributor only require few megabytes of internet and few minutes of his >> time: getting a tarball of CPython sources (or cloning the github CPython >> mirror)**, a basic text editor and msys-git. The step further, if doing >> some -even basic- C code is required, implies downloading 9GB of Visual >> Studio and countless hours for it to be ready to use. >> I think downloading the whole Visual Studio suite is a huge stopper to >> contribute further for an average medium-or-below-contributor. >> >> I think (and I must not be the only one since CPython is to be moved >> to github), that barriers to contribute to CPython should be set to >> the lowest. >> Of course my situation is a bit special but I think it represents >> daily struggle of a *lot* of non-western programmer (at least for >> limited internet)(even here in Australia, landline limited internet >> connections are very common). >> It's not a big deal if the MinGW result build is twenty time slower or >> if some of the most advanced modules can't be build. But everyone >> programmer should be able to easily make some C hacks and get them to >> work. >> >> Hoping you'll be receptive to my pleas, >> Cheers >> >> >> * I am currently picking fruits in the regional Australia. I live in a van >> and have internet through with smartphone through an EDGE connection. I >> can >> plug the laptop in the farm but not in the van. >> ** No fresh programmer use mercurial unless he has a gun pointed on his >> head. >> _______________________________________________ >> Python-Dev mailing list >> Python-Dev@python.org >> https://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-dev >> Unsubscribe: >> https://mail.python.org/mailman/options/python-dev/tritium-list%40sdamon.com >> > > _______________________________________________ > Python-Dev mailing list > Python-Dev@python.org > https://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-dev > Unsubscribe: > https://mail.python.org/mailman/options/python-dev/g.rodola%40gmail.com > My personal experience with psutil is that at some point I simply gave up trying to support mingw because it was too difficult and I couldn't keep up with it anymore. I had to hack through all sorts of missing stuff such as: https://github.com/giampaolo/psutil/blob/08d490d0d8fa60ee1d689cca30738ceb599298d0/psutil/arch/windows/ntextapi.h, I always wondered why mingw doesn't do it for me, plus the fact that I never really got it to work with 64-bit Python. I can only imagine what it would mean doing something similar in a much larger C code base such as Python's. The advantage of being able to use something else other than VS (which I despise as well) would undoubtedly be enormous, but from my experience mingw is an alternative which simply doesn't work. -- Giampaolo - http://grodola.blogspot.com
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