On 23 December 2013 20:53, Chris Barker <[email protected]> wrote: > then you explicitly put in "bin", sbin", "share", whatever? > > This seems really klunky to me, and also forces platform dependence, and is > fundamentally tied to how posix does things.... > > Maybe it's not possible, but I suggest that we could pre-define the > locations that might be needed:
Agreed. My biggest concern with this whole idea is that developers (typically POSIX developers, but it applies equally to all) will *think* they need something like sbin because they are used to the concept from their environment, and so write their wheel to use it and hence be platform specific. However, with a little thought (possibly hardly any thought in the case of sbin :-)) they could have chosen a more generic approach which makes their project available to users of other platforms. This has been a very common issue historically, and I'm very reluctant to add anything that makes it easier to limit usability of packages across platforms. Portable by default should be the principle. But I see there is a need, and I understand that practicality beats purity. Let's just make sure that it's more effort to use the platform-specific approach than not to, so it doesn't become an attractive nuisance. BTW, I like your idea of defining generic locations - but in the past efforts to do this have been doomed to death by bikeshedding and platform wars. So while I agree in principle, I fear it may not happen in practice :-( Paul _______________________________________________ Distutils-SIG maillist - [email protected] https://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/distutils-sig
