Re: Replace uses of deprecated Python module distutils.sysconfig

Hi,

On 2022-01-23 19:00:41 -0500, Tom Lane wrote:
> Andres Freund <andres(at)anarazel(dot)de> writes:
> > On 2022-01-23 18:31:44 -0500, Tom Lane wrote:
> >> Yeah, but we don't know whether there are any versions of the Debian
> >> packaging in which they fixed the file layout, so that 'posix_local'
> >> actually does describe the layout.
>
> > I think posix_local try to achieve something different than what you assume it
> > does. It's intended to return the location to which "locally" intalled python
> > extension install their files (including headers) - after having the problem
> > that such local python package installations overwrite (and thus broke) files
> > installed via the system mechanism.
>
> Okay, but surely they'd have thought of packages that just want to find
> out where the system Python headers are?

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?

The recommended way to find flags to compile against python appears to be the
python$version-config binary. To which we might not want to switch.

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?

For me that returns more sensible paths.

Greetings,

Andres Freund