Re: Replace uses of deprecated Python module distutils.sysconfig

Andres Freund <andres(at)anarazel(dot)de> writes:
> I think this might be problem on our own end, actually. The distutils.sysconfig
> code did
> a = '-I' + distutils.sysconfig.get_python_inc(False)
> b = '-I' + distutils.sysconfig.get_python_inc(True)
> which the patch upthread changed to
> +a = '-I' + sysconfig.get_path('include')
> +b = '-I' + sysconfig.get_path('platinclude')
> but I think that's possibly not quite the right translation?

I don't buy it. The sysconfig documentation says pretty clearly
that get_path('include') and get_path('platinclude') are supposed
to return the directories we want, and there's nothing there
suggesting that we ought to magically know to look in a
non-default scheme.

(I do note that the documentation says there's no direct
equivalent to what get_python_inc does, which is scary.)

> But even so, it seems using sysconfig.get_config_vars('INCLUDEPY') or such
> seems like it might be a better translation than the above
> sysconfig.get_path() stuff?

Can you find ANY documentation suggesting that INCLUDEPY is
meant as a stable API for outside code to use? That seems
far more fragile than anything else we've discussed, even
if it happens to work today.

I remain of the persuasion that these Debian packages are
broken. The fact that they've not perpetuated the scheme
into their python3 packages shows that they came to the
same conclusion. We should not be inventing usage patterns
based on a belief that it's supposed to work like this,
because what we'll mainly get out of that is failures on
other platforms.

regards, tom lane