Anthony Baxter wrote: >> 4. .egg files. -1 > > As far as I understand it, an egg file is just a zipimport format zip > file with some additional metadata. You can also install the egg > files in an unpacked way, if you prefer that. I don't understand the > objection here - it's no better or worse than countless packages in > site-packages, and if it gives us multiple versions of the same code, > all the better.
It is worse: each .egg file makes an additional sys.path entry (if I understand correctly); every import statement will traverse every every package. I'm not sure precisely how all this works, but I wouldn't be surprised if the zip directory is read over and over again. Compare that to countless packages in site-packages: "import foo" will *just* look for foo.py, foo.so, and the directory foo. I understand there is a second API to importing, some kind of "require()" call. I consider that even worse: it obsoletes the language's mechanism for modules, and defines its own modularization. However, this isn't really my objection to .egg files. I dislike them because they compete with platform packages: .rpm, .msi, .deb. Package authors will refuse to produce them, putting the burden of package maintenance (what packages are installed, what are their dependencies, when should I remove a package) onto the the end user/system administrator. Regards, Martin _______________________________________________ Python-Dev mailing list Python-Dev@python.org http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-dev Unsubscribe: http://mail.python.org/mailman/options/python-dev/archive%40mail-archive.com
