Request: Add instructions for building from source

[joshdavham]

Since building fugashi from source is a little more complicated than simply running pip install ., could we get some instructions on how to set it up locally? This would be especially helpful for those of us less familiar with C++ and Cython.

For reference, here's pytorch's guide on how to build from source (though I doubt fugashi would need to be nearly as involved).

Let me know if you have any questions 👍

[polm]

Thank you for the suggestion.

After thinking about it, I am not sure I want to do this.

One of the main merits of fugashi is that it offers wheels so that it's easy to use and reproducible. If wheels are missing for a platform, then I would like people to open a bug report so I can make the wheels, rather than having a lot of users build from source.

If you want to build from source, it's actually very simple - you build MeCab and then you do, in fact, just run pip install .. MeCab is basically a very standard autotools C++ project and is not hard to build. If you are not comfortable figuring this out you shouldn't be installing it from source!

For reference, why do you want to build fugashi from source? Did you try to build it from source and fail?

[joshdavham]

why do you want to build fugashi from source?

I also maintain a bunch of python packages and was looking into potentially taking some inspiration from a more mature package like this one. IIRC, I was specifically interested in being able to run the unit tests.

Did you try to build it from source and fail?

Yes, but I didn't try super hard. I'm not actually very familiar with C++ or Cython so perhaps building it from source is trivial if one does know these languages, but I unfortunately currently don't. I was hoping that there'd be a short guide on how to build from source.

If you are not comfortable figuring this out you shouldn't be installing it from source!

I take your point here, but I'm not totally sure if I agree. Do you think not providing guidance on how to build from source could provide a barrier to entry for some looking to improve the repo, whether it be by reproducing bugs, adding documentation, unit tests, etc?