On 2009-03-24 23:47, Martin v. Löwis wrote: >> An installer for a pure-python package that made no attempt >> to bundle dependencies might be nice, but I don't quite see how that >> falls outside the scope of distutils/setuptools/etc. In other words, I >> don't see why the installer can't bootstrap the 'normal' dependency >> management which would be used if the package was installed any other >> way or on other platforms. > > Perhaps that could be a solution. However, in package management > systems that solve this properly, you also have proper uninstallation, > which includes: > - uninstallation is rejected if packages still depend on the > to-be-removed package (or else offers to remove the relying packages > as well) > - uninstallation reference-counts, causing an automatically-installed > package to be uninstalled if it is no longer needed, or else offers > to compute-then-uninstall all packages which are no longer needed. > The .exe/.msi installers do support uninstallation, but, alas, no > dependency management.
Question is: who really needs such dependency management ? * It may be helpful to developers who wrap up 3rd party code for an application (e.g. Miro). * It may also help users that want to install a few plugins for an already installed application (e.g. Zope). * It will help users who use OSes that rely on software management tools to keep the initial distribution size small and prefer sharing over application isolation (e.g. Ubuntu). * It won't simplify things if such a system gets in the way of how the users or developer usually works or wants to work in a project. * It introduces dependencies on network resources that may potentially not be trusted. * If the package dependencies are not managed with lots of quality assurance, it can easily ruin your complete installation or simply prevent you from installing two sets of packages at the same time. There are both lots of reasons for wanting dependency checking and against such dependency checking. As a result, there is no definite answer as to whether it's good or bad and there is no single system that would satisfy all users/developers. Instead, there needs to be freedom of choice and distutils provides this freedom of choice by allowing you to ship .exes, .msi installers, binary drop-in ZIP archives, RPM packages, Debian packages, etc. etc. -- Marc-Andre Lemburg eGenix.com Professional Python Services directly from the Source (#1, Mar 24 2009) >>> Python/Zope Consulting and Support ... http://www.egenix.com/ >>> mxODBC.Zope.Database.Adapter ... http://zope.egenix.com/ >>> mxODBC, mxDateTime, mxTextTools ... http://python.egenix.com/ ________________________________________________________________________ 2009-03-19: Released mxODBC.Connect 1.0.1 http://python.egenix.com/ ::: Try our new mxODBC.Connect Python Database Interface for free ! :::: eGenix.com Software, Skills and Services GmbH Pastor-Loeh-Str.48 D-40764 Langenfeld, Germany. CEO Dipl.-Math. Marc-Andre Lemburg Registered at Amtsgericht Duesseldorf: HRB 46611 http://www.egenix.com/company/contact/ _______________________________________________ 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
