On Thu, Jun 18, 2009 at 3:57 AM, Ben Finney<[email protected]> wrote: > Trent Mick <[email protected]> writes: > >> My preferences is for .zip (that is what I use for my packages), the >> main reason is that Windows users can always unpack a .zip file. Often >> that is not true for .tar.gz or .tar.bz2 files. > > The reverse is true on Unix. The tar-and-gzip format is extensively used > so it is pretty much guaranteed to be readable on any Unix system; the > Zip format does not have anywhere near the same level of guarantee. > > I would think the best solution is to use the tar format (since, as > pointed out elsewhere, it has better support for symlinks and permission > flags that are often important when distributing works), and ensure that > distutils will include a tool for unpacking them with pure Python on > those platforms without external support for the format. >
+1 A end-user that uses easy_install ends up calling the stdlib tarfile module to unpack the archives, so it works out of the box. I guess pip is also using that code (unpack_archive in setuptools.archive_util) Although, I would rather see a new high-level function in tarfile itself, callable from the __main__ section, to pack/unpack an archive provided in the arguments. (like the doctest modules has). Cheers Tarek _______________________________________________ Distutils-SIG maillist - [email protected] http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/distutils-sig
