Python Packaging Strategy Discussion - Part 1

[petersuter]

Install C extension sdists without requiring a pre-installed compiler

I’ve been playing around with the Zig toolchain. One very interesting thing I found recently is that Zig’s toolchain, being completely self-contained, portable, and extremely compact, is being distributed on PyPI as an installable Python package. Combining with the fact that the Zig compiler has first-class support compiling C code, this means any sdist can acquire a working C compiler by simply adding ziglang as a PEP 517 build dependency. With some glue code around the compiler, I was able to …

I thought this was an interesting approach to install a C compiler more easily / reliably. But I guess it doesn’t work for everything (e.g. C++)?