2009/10/11 Tarek Ziadé <[email protected]>: > On Sun, Oct 11, 2009 at 10:45 PM, Ian Bicking <[email protected]> wrote: >> On Sun, Oct 11, 2009 at 3:39 PM, Tarek Ziadé <[email protected]> wrote: >>>> So why is there a need for an egg binary format on Windows? >>> >>> I think the only extra specific feature bdist_egg provides is the >>> ability to use the self-contained >>> egg (zipped or not) directly in sys.path without having to install it >>> in a site-packages like directory. >>> >>> That's how zc.buildout works for example to isolate an execution >>> environment : it collects eggs in a directory called 'eggs', then >>> creates scripts with a modified sys.path that lists the paths of each >>> egg located in 'eggs'. >> >> That's a feature of the installed (multi-version) egg, not the >> distribution format. That feature can be kept (or discussed, or >> whatever) separately from the discussion of bdist_egg as a >> distribution format. > > The bdist_egg distribution format, an 'egg', can be used directly in a > Python interpreter > without having to install it at all : > > $ wget http://pypi.python.org/packages/2.6/W/Wally/Wally-0.6.4-py2.6.egg > $ python >>>> import sys >>>> sys.path.insert(0, 'Wally-0.6.4-py2.6.egg') >>>> import wally >>>> wally > <module 'wally' from 'Wally-0.6.4-py2.6.egg/wally/__init__.py'>
OK, that's a fair point. But how many people actually use this functionality? More to the point, how many *windows* users use this functionality (as bdist_wininst isn't an alternative for non-windows users anyway)? And to restrict it even further, how many windows users use it for *binary* distributions (ie, using C code) as packaging non-C code from source is trivial)? Unfortunately, it's a social rather than a technical issue, but it would be really good if some way could be found to reverse the current trend away from a single distribution format. Paul. _______________________________________________ Distutils-SIG maillist - [email protected] http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/distutils-sig
