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notes on compilation Python with MinGW gcc

Ames Andreas (MPA/DF) Andreas.Ames at tenovis.com
Mon Dec 1 15:33:47 EST 2003 
Hi Oleg,

usenet at xmlhack.ru (Oleg A. Paraschenko) writes:

>   recently I compiled Python with MinGW gcc under Windows.
> If there are some interest, you can look at log of process at
> 
> http://uucode.com/texts/python-mingw/python-mingw.html
> 
> In short, about compiling with MinGW gcc:
> 
> * it is possible;
> * result works;
> * you must not do it unless you know for sure that you must do it;
> * you must have a good knowledge of C and of debugging;
> * in most cases all you need is to compile an extension module.

I've recently taken a slitely different way to accomplish a native
mingw32 build.  You can get a patch from

https://sourceforge.net/tracker/?func=detail&aid=841454&group_id=5470&at
id=305470

As I haven't used msys yet and my real goal was to build a
mingw32-python on linux (without the adventures of installing VC6
under wine, which reportedly works either).  Thus it had to be a
crosscompile, but you should be able to use cygwin (but you must edit
xbuild-py.sh to do so and you must --build and --host on cygwin too,
I've started the crossbuild on cygwin).

The build still has quite a few 'rough edges' ;-):

1) The resource files (*.rc) are not yet compiled/linked in.  Given
   that they are rather simple I wouldn't expect significant
   difficulties using windres.  There would need to happen some
   changes to Makefile.pre.in though.

2) pythonw.exe is not yet built.  Similar changes as above needed.

3) I couldn't yet convince scons that it would be a good idea to have
   a build directory seperate from the source tree.  I have tried both
   the BuildDir function and the build_dir parameter to the
   SConscrript function but to no avail.  It could either be a bug in
   scons or my own inability.  As this was my first scons-script, I
   guess it's the latter.  Some scons knowledgeable person might be
   able to fix this within seconds.

Before you get a useful environment you must copy the Lib/
subdirectory from source- to the buildtree as well as all the *.pyd
files from <source>/Modules and <source>/PC to <build>/DLLs or
something.  Note that running the testcases from a samba-share isn't
good because the tests use filenames with an '@' sign which samba
doesn't seem to like.  You might be better off copying the complete
buildtree to a native windows partition (if you build from linux
anyway).

The patch applies to 2.3.2 because I have no easy way to access the
cvs repository.  If there was interest in a native mingw32-python I
would like to help to solve the above issues (and others I haven't
found yet).  But it doesn't appear that there is much interest in
this, so I'd guess you can take the above as a toy project.


cheers,

andreas
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