Currently on Windows when building the cefpython module you first need to build the C++ libraries and the subprocess executable by building vcproj files separately. It's a manual process that needs to be automated. On Linux/Mac it's better, the compile.py script will build the C++ libs and the subprocess executable automatically by running Makefile. However when making changes, these changes need to be done separately for Windows and for Mac/Linux. A cross-platform solution for building these libs/subprocess would be nice.

Solution 1: Cmake and Ninja

CMake - https://cmake.org/
Ninja - https://ninja-build.org/

• Refactor the client_handler/ and subprocess/ directories and put all .cpp/.h files to app/ directory.
• Get rid of all the vcproj files on Windows:
  • client_handler_py27_32bit.vcproj
  • libcefpythonapp_py27_32bit.vcproj
  • subprocess_32bit.vcproj

Solution 2: setuptools

Looks like there may be an alternative to cmake/ninja. Turns out setuptools can not only build python modules, but also static libraries and executables. Search in Google for "setuptools + xxx" where xxx is:

• StaticLib class
• StaticLibrary class
• Executable class
• "libraries" keyword
• build_clib

Does setuptools have some kind of cache mechanism? So that it doesn't rebuild every time when there are no changes in sources?

• Looks like yes, force rebuilding pass --force flag to setup.py

Cmake seems complicated, things aren't easier than Makefiles, just provides cross-platform support. Using setuptools may be easier, it already takes care of detecting which VC++ compiler to use depending on Python version used. However distutils/setuptools documentation is very poor. I couldn't find any references to "StaticLib" and "Executable" classes referenced above. Some links:

• setuptools repo: https://github.com/pypa/setuptools
• setuptools docs: https://setuptools.readthedocs.io/en/latest/setuptools.html
• distutils docs: https://docs.python.org/2/distutils/apiref.html (setuptools should support all features that distutils provides I think)