[Pyrex] Cython development

[Arc Riley]

> May I ask one question: why are your users impacted by Cython/Pyrex? Don't
> you
> ship with pre-generated .c files? (and how do you do quality assurance in
> your
> users use their own version of Pyrex?)


Up until the last release we were distributing pre-processed .c files.

We've received at least a dozen complaints (which means a t least a few
dozen more) about this, that the .c source in our tarballs are unparseable
by  any sane human, that we haven't actually complied with the GPL's
requirements in the "source" release since the .c sources are not what is
intended to be modified, and of course Windows users needing a separate
source zip since we have OS-specific building going on the Pyrex level.

Since the .c sources are OS-specific and add a great deal to the overall
package size, we've reached a rough consensus that starting with our next
release our source tarball will be pre-processed only; basically just Trunk
snapshotted to a versioned tag and a few version strings set in it.

Even beside this, we currently have 11 active developers, 20 total
contributors according to ohloh.  According to my logs, 197 anonymous full
checkouts (based on access to a file that hasn't changed) have been made by
non-bots since our last release, compared to 1449 downloads of our last
release (12%), and we know at least a dozen of those are regulars.

I include these stats to show that pre-generating the *.c is an inadequate
solution.
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