DEVELOPERS.txt

Developing buildout itself
**************************

When you're developing buildout itself, you need to know two things:

- Use a clean python *without* setuptools installed.  Otherwise many tests
  will find your already-installed setuptools, leading to test differences
  when setuptools' presence is explicitly tested.

- Don't bootstrap with ``python bootstrap/bootstrap.py`` but with ``python
  dev.py``.

For your convenience we provide a Makefile to build various Python versions
in subdirectories of the buildout checkout. To use these and run the tests
with them do::

    make PYTHON_VER=2.6 build
    make PYTHON_VER=2.6 test

    make PYTHON_VER=2.7 build
    make PYTHON_VER=2.7 test

    make PYTHON_VER=3.2 build
    make PYTHON_VER=3.2 test

The actual Python compilation is only done once and then re-used. So on
subsequent builds, only the development buildout itself needs to be redone.