Re: [Bug-pyconfigure] automake and pyconfigure: a future integration? (was: Re: [PATCH] AM_PATH_PYTHON: try "python2" et al. first)

[Kerrick Staley]

Quite a lengthy response for such a simple inquiry!

Really, I'd just like to get gobject-introspection to compile on Arch Linux. The problem is that gobject-introspection's configure.ac has the line

AM_PATH_PYTHON([2.5])

but gobject-introspection can't actually work with Python 3 or higher (the default on Arch); it needs Python 2. Automake doesn't seem to provide a way to specify this need.

The problem could be fixed by changing AM_PATH_PYTHON could be changed to prefer Python 2 over Python 3, as my patch does. However, I guess this would cause packages that support both Python 2 and Python 3 to build against Python 2 by default even if Python 3 is present.

Pyconfigure looks like the best way forward, then, but it's not widely deployed at this point. AM_PATH_PYTHON could also just be tweaked to support a "max version" argument. I'm passing PYTHON=/usr/bin/python2 to autogen.sh for the time being.

- Kerrick