Drop support of Borland C compiler

[vstinner]

BPO	22592
Nosy	@mdickinson, @pitrou, @vstinner, @serhiy-storchaka
Files	drop_borlandc_support.patch

^{Note: these values reflect the state of the issue at the time it was migrated and might not reflect the current state.}

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GitHub fields:

assignee = None
closed_at = <Date 2014-10-22.10:35:02.767>
created_at = <Date 2014-10-09.22:00:53.085>
labels = []
title = 'Drop support of Borland C compiler'
updated_at = <Date 2014-10-23.23:02:30.701>
user = 'https://github.com/vstinner'

bugs.python.org fields:

activity = <Date 2014-10-23.23:02:30.701>
actor = 'berker.peksag'
assignee = 'none'
closed = True
closed_date = <Date 2014-10-22.10:35:02.767>
closer = 'vstinner'
components = []
creation = <Date 2014-10-09.22:00:53.085>
creator = 'vstinner'
dependencies = []
files = ['36857']
hgrepos = []
issue_num = 22592
keywords = ['patch']
message_count = 11.0
messages = ['228923', '228926', '229460', '229461', '229475', '229477', '229487', '229489', '229808', '229809', '229810']
nosy_count = 6.0
nosy_names = ['mark.dickinson', 'pitrou', 'vstinner', 'Arfrever', 'python-dev', 'serhiy.storchaka']
pr_nums = []
priority = 'normal'
resolution = 'fixed'
stage = 'resolved'
status = 'closed'
superseder = None
type = None
url = 'https://bugs.python.org/issue22592'
versions = ['Python 3.5']

[vstinner]

As a follow-up of the issue bpo-22591, I propose to drop support of the Borland C compiler.

In 2000, it was nice to support Visual Studio and Borland C++ Builder, because they were the two most popular compilers on Windows. Borland C compiler could also be used on MS-DOS.

But Borland stopped the development of its C compiler, it looks like the last release is Borland C++ Builder, which was released in 2000 (I'm not sure). So this proprietary compiler is now 14 years old.

Python now focus on Visual Studio support. Microsoft gives us free licenses and a developer of Microsoft will probably build our binaries for Python 3.5. So Borland C++ Builder support is now almost useless.

On Windows, I would prefer to focus our effort on open source compilers like GCC or OpenWatcom(v2). See for example the issue bpo-22579.

[vstinner]

And now with a patch.

[vstinner]

It looks like Larry Hastings supports indirectly this issue :-)
"We still have #ifdef's for Borland C--I'd be very surprised if anyone was compiling Python 3 with Borland C."
https://mail.python.org/pipermail/python-dev/2014-October/136626.html

[pitrou]

I don't know how reliable that Web site is, but apparently it may still be used for education:
http://borlandc.org/

[serhiy-storchaka]

Antoine, antique Turbo Pascal 7.0 (for DOS!) [1] is widely used for education in xUSSR countries. Due to a bug [2] in the crt unit most education examples can't be ran on computers with modern processors (Pentium MMX and newer) and are ran under DosBox [3].

School teachers often are very conservative. The use of something for education doesn't means that it is used for other purposes.

[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Turbo_Pascal
[2] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Runtime_error_200
[3] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DOSBox

[serhiy-storchaka]

As for Borland C, it was reincarnated as Borland C++ Builder [1] and then as Embarcadero C++ Builder. I doubt that anyone was compiling Python 3 with it.

[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/C%2B%2BBuilder

[pitrou]

Then +1 from me for removing support.

[serhiy-storchaka]

The patch LGTM but there is Borland C support in distutils and there are several mentions in the documentation. May be there are mentions in some build-support files.

[vstinner]

The patch LGTM but there is Borland C support in distutils

As discussed on python-dev, it's fine to support more C compiler to compile extensions, than compilers supported to build Python itself.

there are several mentions in the documentation

I did a quick check. It looks like "Borland" is usally mentionned to compile extensions, not to compile Python.

May be there are mentions in some build-support files.

Which files?

[python-dev]

New changeset f2ce9603346c by Victor Stinner in branch 'default':
Issue bpo-22592: Drop support of the Borland C compiler to build Python
https://hg.python.org/cpython/rev/f2ce9603346c

[vstinner]

Ok, I pushed my patch. If you see remaining parts of the Borland C compiler, you can remove them in a different changeset (reopen maybe the issue?).

For distutils, I consider that it's a different topic. If you want to drop support of this compiler in distutils, please open a new issue.