simple system for building packages for multiple platforms?

[Dan Goodman]

Hi all,

Until recently, our package has been pure Python, so distributing it has
been straightforward. Now, however, we want to add some extension
modules in C++. We're happy to provide source only distributions on
Linux because almost all Linux users will have all the required
compilers and so forth already installed. But we also want to support
Windows users who may not have C++ compilers available, which means
providing built distributions. But, we're faced with this problem, there
are three versions of Python we're supporting (2.5-2.7) and two
architectures (32 and 64 bit), which means 6 possible platforms to build
for (and maybe more in future if we upgrade to Python 3). Is there a
straightforward way to set up a semi-automated build system for this?

At the moment, I'm thinking about either having a bunch of virtual
machines or Amazon EC2 instances and submitting build jobs to these, but
setting that up looks to be a lot of work and I guess many people have
had this problem before. So, what do other people do?

Also, once we have a build system up, I guess it can also be used for a
more extensive testing system on these multiple platforms?

Dan

[Miki Tebeka]

IMO you can have different versions of Python on the same machine. So it's two windows machines. (Assuming you're going with *one* OS version :)

Also note there is some legal mambo jumbo around distributing MSVC DLLs (unless you plan to use mingw).

[Miki Tebeka]