Re: [Monotone-devel] package_full_revision.txt and derived files

[Dean Kusler]

Jon Bright wrote:
> Very few Windows users have Python.  For people with decent package 
> management, getting scons (and its dependencies) is probably pretty 
> easy.  Unless it's really necessary, though, I think it's probably an 
> unwise choice for Monotone, as it makes building of Montone more 
> difficult on systems *without* good package management (like Windows).

While that is probably true (although I certainly have Python installed on 
my Windows machines), installation of Python and Scons only requires 
downloading and running two windows executables. If we package scons-local 
with monotone, then you only need to download and run the python 
installer. I haven't tried it, but we might be able to produce a binary 
windows executable of Scons using something like cx_Freeze or py2exe.

Regardless of that, I think that asking people to have Python and Scons
installed on Windows isn't much more uncommon then asking them to have all 
of the other required development tools. Besides, they don't need to have 
Python and Scons to *run* Monotone, and I think that most Windows users 
will want to just download the newest compile from venge.net/monotone/ and 
use that.

Now, as to whether it's worth it to switch the build system over at this 
point... I have no idea. I have worked a little bit with Scons, but I've 
avoided make/automake/autoconf because it's always seemed like such a huge 
pain in the ass. I've built Monotone a couple of times, and other than 
getting the right version of automake to run in Gentoo I didn't have too 
many problems.

I think that the decision to switch should be done on technical merit of 
the systems and the time required to do the switch, and I will leave that 
decision up to the people who know what they're talking about. I just 
think that the argument shouldn't get hung up on Python and Scons build 
dependencies.

Dean

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