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Re: Using Py_SetPythonHome
- From: John Gilmore <gnu at toad dot com>
- To: Jan Kratochvil <jan dot kratochvil at redhat dot com>
- Cc: Joel Brobecker <brobecker at adacore dot com>, Doug Evans <dje at google dot com>, Meador Inge <meadori at codesourcery dot com>, gdb at sourceware dot org
- Date: Thu, 04 Oct 2012 00:32:50 -0700
- Subject: Re: Using Py_SetPythonHome
- References: <20120917174611.GA27891@host2.jankratochvil.net> <CADPb22R4cTRqHyRi6asd6muJooPFPaCaRi2DDuqEtA+ew9jrRQ@mail.gmail.com> <20120919080410.GA12296@host2.jankratochvil.net> <20120921153645.GD5439@adacore.com> <20120921154345.GA30615@host2.jankratochvil.net> <20120921155758.GE5439@adacore.com> <20120921172735.GA4341@host2.jankratochvil.net> <20121002130854.GL30746@adacore.com> <20121003151244.GA22734@host2.jankratochvil.net> <20121003153854.GC13994@adacore.com> <20121003175343.GA14317@host2.jankratochvil.net>
Package management is a sinkhole, unfortunately. The OLPC project has
unfortunately discovered that despite the great support in the GNU
tools for cross-compilation, the Fedora package management tools are
completely incapable of cross-compilation. So now that they are
making hardware with three architectures to build software for (i386,
i686, and ARM), they need to dedicate three kinds of hardware to
building their Fedora-based releases. They can't make an OS image on
a fast x86 machine that will install or boot on an ARM.(*)
(I think Debian/Ubuntu package managers suffer from the same problem;
they all assume they're running "native", they run package-specific
shell scripts that think they're running in the target environment,
etc.)
I recommend NOT assuming that package managers are the cat's pajamas
and that therefore we can all skip the ability to usefully build from
source.
Having seen this Py_SetPythonHome discussion drag on for what seems
months (I think it's the most frequent subject line in the mailing
list), and yet I still don't understand why y'all care, perhaps someone
should try to write up a solid proposal that explains what the hell is
going on, with pros and cons listed and generally agreed upon. That
might help point a path to making a decision that sticks for a while.
John
(*): They can run builds under QEMU on x86, emulating the ARM
instruction set, using a set of native ARM compilers and a full ARM
GNU/Linux virtual machine, and make the ARM builds that way. Indeed they
do -- it's only a 2- to 3-times slowdown, which is far easier than
rewriting the package management subsystem for cross-compilation and
then getting the changes adopted "upstream" into Fedora. And far, far
easier than building fast hardware based on an available ARM chip.