On Sat, 3 Dec 2005, Phillip J. Eby wrote:
[...]
> Well, there isn't really a way to do 1-of-N dependencies,
OK.
> since you would need a way for the user to pick one to be satisfied by
> easy_install.
That's not a "since", that's an "and" :-)
I know where you're coming from though, of course: no need to explain
further.
> It seems like the straightforward thing to do is treat it as an optional
> ("extras") dependency, and have the user install matplotlib[Numeric] or
> matplotlib[numarray] accordingly.
How about setup.py authors having some means of defining a default
dependency, where there is an choice of dependencies? In my case, and I
guess for Scipy too (presumably they want people to use scipy_core, all
else being equal), there's an obvious 'recommended choice'. That
recommended choice may vary with time, but ISTM the users often split
fairly neatly into two groups:
1. People who just want to say 'give me the standard setup, whatever is
currently recommended'
2. People who know just what they want
It also seems to me that #1 is most often the bigger group. Those people
then need to read install instructions specific to the particular package
they're installing. It may be that the choice of dependencies isn't
terribly significant for most users, but they're forced to know about it
regardless in the current state of affairs.
FWIW, the particular P, B, and C I had in mind are (C is not a current
dependency of P, but may or may not an alternative to B be in future):
P: mechanize
B: pullparser
C: BeautifulSoup
John
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