Ronald Oussoren wrote: > As far as I understand the issues they compete up to a point, but should > also make it easier to create platform packages that contain proper the > proper dependencies because those are part of machine-readable meta-data > instead of being written down in readme files. Oddly enough that was > also the objection from one linux distribution maintainer: somehow his > opinion was that the author of a package couldn't possibly know the > right depedencies for it.
What he can't possibly know is the *name* of the package he depends on. For example, a distutils package might be called 'setuptools', so developers of additional packages might depend on 'setuptools'. However, on Debian, the dependency should be different: The package should depend on either 'python-setuptools' or 'python2.3-setuptools', depending on details which are off-topic here. > As for platform packages: not all platforms have useable packaging systems. > MacOSX is one example of those, the system packager is an installer and > doesn't include an uninstaller. Eggs make it a lot easier to manage python > software in such an environment (and please don't point me to Fink or > DarwinPorts on OSX, those have serious problems of their own). Isn't uninstallation just a matter of deleting a directory? If I know that I want to uninstall the Python package 'foo', I just delete its directory. Now, with setuptools, I might have multiple versions installed, so I have to chose (in Finder) which of them I want to delete. That doesn't require Eggs to be single-file zipfiles; deleting a directory would work just as will (and I believe it will work with ez_install, too). >> 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. > > Philip has added specific support for them: it is possible to install > packages in the tradition way but with some additional files that tell > setuptools about installed packages. As a system administrator, I don't *want* to learn how to install Python packages. I know how to install RPMs (or MSIs, or whatever system I manage); this should be good enough. If "this Python junk" comes with its own installer procedure, I will hate it. 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
