On 12/22/05, M.-A. Lemburg <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > Ian Bicking wrote: > > I'm still finding it impossible to use multiple versions of a package > > unless none of them show up in a .pth file (i.e., none are available > > without requiring), I get a VersionConflict. > > This comes up every now and then when discussing the benefits > of easy_install. > > I'd really like to understand what the use case is for having > multiple versions of a package around. > > Note that sys.modules (the registry of loaded modules) does > not support having multiple versions of a module loaded.
I think the point is to allow multiple versions to be installed on the system, but allow an individual program, at run time, to specify which one is to be loaded. There will never be more than one version loaded in any specific instance, but if program A requires version 1 of package X, and program B requires version 2 of package X, both can run without needing a reinstall of package X in between. Of course, this is also possible via PYTHONPATH manipulations, or sys.path modifications in the program before doing the import. All setuptools is doing is to provide a common infrastructure for handling this. Paul. _______________________________________________ Distutils-SIG maillist - Distutils-SIG@python.org http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/distutils-sig