Adding Mercurial build identification to Python

Setting up the environment

The current Python development branch is first checkout:

svn co http://svn.python.org/projects/python/trunk

A patch will be applied for adding the 'sys.mercurial' attribute and modifying the build informations:

cp add-hg-build-id.diff trunk/
cd trunk
svn up -r 78019
patch -p0 < add-hg-build-id.diff

The changed made to 'configure.in' need then to be propagated to the configure script:

autoconf

The configuration is then done by:

./configure --enable-shared --prefix=/dev/null

You should now see changes propagated to the Makefile for finding the revision, the tag and the branch:

grep MERCURIAL Makefile

Finally, Python can be built:

make

The sys.mercurial attribute should already be present:

LD_LIBRARY_PATH=. ./python
>>> import sys
>>> sys.mercurial
('CPython', '', '')

No tag nor revision have been found as there was no mercurial repository. A test by the Py_GetBuildInfo() in the C API will also be built:

gcc -o show-build-info -I. -IInclude -L. -lpython2.7 ../show-build-info.c

You can test its result by:

LD_LIBRARY_PATH=. ./show-build-info
-> default, Feb  7 2010, 15:07:46

Manual test

First a fake mercurial tree is built:

hg init
hg add README
hg ci -m "Initial repo"
hg id
-> 84a6de74e48f tip

Now Python needs to be built with the given mercurial information:

rm Modules/getbuildinfo.o
make

You should then see the current revision number:

LD_LIBRARY_PATH=. ./python
>>> import sys
>>> sys.mercurial
('CPython', 'default', '84a6de74e48f')

and the C API can be tested by:

LD_LIBRARY_PATH=. ./show-build-info
-> default:84a6de74e48f, Feb  7 2010, 15:10:13

The fake mercurial repository can now be cleaned:

rm -rf .hg

Automatic tests

Automatic tests for checking the behavior for every cases will now work build Python and clean afterward. Those tests work only when run from the trunk svn directory of Python:

python ../test_build_identification.py

Further work

The current work is only an attempt to add the mercurial build identification to Python, it still needs to be checked on production cases. Moreover the build identification on Windows has not been started yet, it will need to be integrated to the Microsoft Visual Studio building process.