Re: Python recompile

On Fri, 7 Mar 2025 14:00:13 +0000, bart wrote:

My view is that building from source should be made as simple as
possible. As easy as compiling hello.c.

For nontrivial open-source projects, that cannot be done without some help
from the operating system. We have already seen, from your struggles with
the Python source, how proprietary OSes like Microsoft Windows seem to go
out of their way to make things difficult for users to build things.

The whole design of Unix from the beginning was not to impose artificial
distinctions between “users” and “programmers”. Indeed, *nix systems allow
for a whole spectrum of usage patterns with different levels of automation
in them, from point-and-click GUIs, through scripting languages, to full-
on compile-link build workflows.

So, how about Linux? Here I don't believe in using conditional code, so
there is a special source version for Linux, let's say it's qu.c:

That’s bad. Now you have to maintain two parallel sets of source.

* No configure scripts
 
* No makefiles
 
* No #ifdef blocks
 
* No header files (in fact virtually no macros in the source file)
 
* Virtually no compiler options, except what are mandatory. Users can
   add -O, -o and -s options if they want.
 
* And the entire distribution for your platform is a single C file

All at the expense of requiring more work from the human developers/
maintainers.

Those of us who are accustomed to *nix systems consider the computer as a
tool to lift the burden of the hard work from us, not to make more work
for us.

Seems like Microsoft Windows inculcates a different attitude ...