Re: building/installing Python modules?

[Skip Montanaro]

    skip> ... and then diddle some bits in arraymodule.c, neither
    skip> .../arraymodule.o nor ..../array.so get rebuilt the next time I
    skip> run make.

    christoph> On my system (linux 2.4, python 2.1.1), the dependency stuff
    christoph> works well. In fact in the above situation, one single
    christoph> 'python setup.py install' command would be enough. 

Thanks for reporting that it works for you.  It works for me as well to
modify the direct C source file that forms the basis for the .so file.  I
believe I must have been confused thinking of the situation when a .h file
changes.  

    christoph> However, for a python developer it has much less effort to
    christoph> use distutils, because one does only has to learn _one_
    christoph> language (python) instead of 3 or 4 for the auto* stuff.

Sure, if all you want to distribute is a few extension modules.  What about
if you want to distribute the library they wrap as well?  That's where the
auto*/libtool gang comes in (I hope - it's difficult enough for me to figure
out how this works that I'm still pondering the benefits).  Distutils won't
help there, and in that case, by eliminating setup.py I would be eliminating
yet another configuration file format people have to know about.  (Forget
that it happens to be Python code.  You still have to know what calls to
make.)

Skip