Re: Python recompile

On Thu, 6 Mar 2025 19:21:45 -0000 (UTC), Waldek Hebisch wrote:

> Per platform Makefile-s do not scale when one wants to support multiple
> system and multiple configurations (there is exponential growth of
> possible combinations).  And even of single configuration for supposedly
> single system like Linux there are troubles.
> In one project there was someting like 20 Makefile.linux_x files where x
> represented one Linux flavour.  Yet regularly somebody would come and
> say: "build fails on my Linux x.y.z".  If enough information was
> provided new Makefile was added, or possibly some similar Makefile was
> modified to cover more cases.

Can you offer more details on the project in question? I ask because
there are things that can be done in GNU Makefiles to deal more
dynamically with environmental differences in some simpler cases,
without resorting to a full-on meta-build system like Autotools or
CMake, and perhaps the maintainers of this project aren’t aware of
that.

Here’s a simple example, building an extension module for Python:

    CFLAGS=-g $(shell python3-config --includes) -fPIC -Wall -Wno-switch -Wno-parentheses

    gxscript_lexer.so : gxscript_lexer.o
        $(CC) $^ $(shell python3-config --ldflags) -shared -o $@

    gxscript_lexer.o : gxscript_lexer.c

    clean :
        rm -f gxscript_lexer.so gxscript_lexer.o
        rm -rf __pycache__

    .PHONY : clean

Note how it uses the “python3-config” command to figure out the right
flags (including file/directory locations) for compilation and
linking. So it doesn’t have to know that the libraries are in /usr/lib
on one system, and /usr/local/lib on another.