[RFC] Adding Python as a possible language and it's usage

[Martin Liška]

On 07/18/2018 08:03 PM, Matthias Klose wrote:
> On 18.07.2018 19:29, Paul Koning wrote:
>>
>>
>>> On Jul 18, 2018, at 1:22 PM, Boris Kolpackov <boris@codesynthesis.com> wrote:
>>>
>>> Paul Koning <paulkoning@comcast.net> writes:
>>>
>>>>> On Jul 18, 2018, at 11:13 AM, Boris Kolpackov <boris@codesynthesis.com> wrote:
>>>>>
>>>>> I wonder what will be the expected way to obtain a suitable version of
>>>>> Python if one is not available on the build machine? With awk I can
>>>>> build it from source pretty much anywhere. Is building newer versions
>>>>> of Python on older targets a similarly straightforward process (somehow
>>>>> I doubt it)? What about Windows?
>>>>
>>>> It's the same sort of thing: untar the sources, configure, make, make
>>>> install.
> 
> Windows binaries and MacOSX binaries are available from upstream.  The build
> process on *ix targets is autoconf based and easy as for awk/gawk.
> 
>>> Will this also install all the Python packages one might plausible want
>>> to use in GCC?
> 
> some extension modules depend on external libraries, but even if those don't
> exist, the build succeeds without building these extension modules. The sources
> come with embedded libs for zlib, libmpdec,  libexpat.  They don't include
> libffi (only in 3.7), libsqlite, libgdbm, libbluetooth, libdb.  I suppose the
> usage of such modules should be banned by policy.  The only needed thing is any
> of libdb (Berkley/SleepyCat) or gdbm to build the anydbm module which might be
> necessary.
> 
>> It installs the entire standard Python library (corresponding to the 1800+ pages of the library manual).  I expect that will easily cover anything GCC might want to do.
> 
> The current usage of awk and perl doesn't include any third party libraries.
> That's where the usage of Python should start with.

Thank you Matthias for explanation of dependencies problematics. I can confirm
that option handling scripts can easily work without any fancy modules.

Martin

> 
> Matthias
>