Thanks for your pointers, Martin.
From your point of view, I do agree that you do not need more intervention from disutils. In fact, if the package maintainers so desire, you do not even need disutils at all. So the question here is, is PEP 262 really needed at all? I can see that Martin or anyone using Debian may not need it. However, at where I am (MacOSX with Fink), I need it.
What is the current plans now?
Cheers Maurice
Maurice Ling wrote:
Given that (1) there can be multiple versions of Python installed in a
system, (2) each version maintains their own site-packages directory and
(3) if C modules are installed, they are not compatible with other
versions of Python... Imagine a system administrator who had installed
50 libraries and their dependencies in site-package of Python 2.3 and
now has to do it for Python 2.4, can we make his life better?
I'd like to point out that this is a task that the "native" package format can solve. For example, in Debian, when I use Debian packages to install the 50 libraries, the current Debian Python policy manages to update all the libraries from Python 2.3 to Python 2.4, when the "official" Debian Python version becomes 2.4.
This is achieved by providing, for a library "foo", several packages: python-foo, python2.2-foo, python2.3-foo, python2.4-foo. As a user, I install python-foo, which currently depends on python2.3-foo. When /usr/bin/python becomes 2.4, a new version of python-foo will be released which depends on python2.4-foo. Just by updating all packages I have installed, it automatically installs python2.4-foo as well.
Of course, if I don't want to wait for Debian to make /usr/bin/python Python 2.4, I easily upgrade all libraries myself:
dpkg --get-selections|grep python2.3-|sed s/2.3/2.4/|dpkg --set-selections
will arrange to select all 2.4 libraries for which I have 2.3 versions installed.
So on Debian, I don't need any further support from distutils.
Regards, Martin
--
Maurice Han Tong LING, BSc(Hons)(Biochem), AdvDipComp, CPT, SSN, FIFA, MASBMB, MAMBIS, MACM
Doctor of Philosophy (Science) Candidate, The University of Melbourne
mobile: +61 4 22781753, +65 96669233
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