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From: bart <bc@freeuk.com>
Newsgroups: comp.lang.c
Subject: Re: Python recompile
Date: Wed, 5 Mar 2025 01:20:07 +0000
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On 05/03/2025 00:16, Lawrence D'Oliveiro wrote:
> On Tue, 4 Mar 2025 18:16:25 +0000, bart wrote:
> 
>> The CPython source bundle doesn't come with any makefiles. The first
>> step appears to be to run a 35,000-line 'configure' script. Part of its
>> job appears to be generate the necessary makefiles.
> 
> This is the usual GNU Autotools thing. The source from which the configure
> script is generated is configure.ac; you will see it makes heavy use of m4
> macros.
> 
>> On Windows, CPython must be built via MSVC, not gcc.
>>
>> That involving installing VS20xx, a 6GB download, which itself first
>> needed a 4GB .NET update. Then I needed GIT. Then SVN. Then MSBUILD
>> tools. Then something else...
>>
>> Whatever I fixed, it always found something else to fail on. After
>> several hours and a lot of downloads, I gave up.
> 
> If only there were a Windows equivalent to “apt-get build-dep” ...

What does that do, just automatic all that crap that shouldn't be 
necessary in the first place? Including spending several minutes running 
through that configure script.

I maintain my own scripting language. Building it from source - on 
Windows - takes 70ms:

   c:\qx>tim mm qq
   Compiling qq.m to qq.exe
   Time: 0.069

The only tool needed is mm.exe: a 0.4MB compiler.

(TBF, my attempt to build CPython was on a much older, slower machine. 
On that one, my product took nearer 0.2 seconds to build from scratch.)