[LLVMdev] Minimum Python Version

[Gordon Keiser]

> -----Original Message-----
> From: llvmdev-bounces at cs.uiuc.edu [mailto:llvmdev-bounces at cs.uiuc.edu]
> On Behalf Of Philip Reames
> Sent: Monday, December 03, 2012 9:51 PM
> To: llvmdev at cs.uiuc.edu
> Subject: Re: [LLVMdev] Minimum Python Version
> 
> 
> 
> On 12/03/2012 01:53 PM, Joshua Cranmer wrote:
> > I don't know any hard examples off the top of my head, but I do
> > definitely remember (while grepping through python docs earlier today)
> > being surprised that some of the functions I use on a consistent basis
> > turned out to have a minimum of python 2.6.
> I have nothing concrete to point to from the LLVM world, but from my own
> experience with my own scripting I found maintaining compatibility between
> Python 2.5 and 3.0 to be a tedious and time consuming process.
> I suspect there's much more of a maintenance burden here than might be
> first obvious.
> 
> A second point worth making is that currently Python is not a dependence of
> someone building or installing LLVM/Clang.  (Er, that hasn't changed recently
> right?)  It's only a dependence for those running the tests (i.e. developers).
> Not sure how that changes the discussion if at all, but I thought it was worth
> mentioning.
> 
> Yours,
> Philip Reames

Slightly OT, 

Last I checked (yesterday), Python has become a requirement for configuring with CMake, with a base LLVM (no clang, compiler-rt, etc) on Windows, with all tests / examples / tools disabled and only building llvm-core and X86/ARM targets. 

If anyone knows whether python is actually needed here or just an artifact of the build system, it would be helpful.  

-Gordon