Joachim König wrote: > So one would have to set up the application specific packages before > running the application, but the > whole clutter of uncounted versions of the same package in one directory > could go away. The > "drawback" of this approach would be, that the same version of a package > would have to be installed > multiple times if needed by different applications.
While this is a very common practice in the Windows world, it is far less common in the *nix world of vendor managed packaging systems. As for why it can be a problem, it (bundling libraries with applications) makes security vulnerability management a *lot* more difficult for system administrators. If a bug is found in a key library (e.g. openssl) a dependency based system just needs to update the single shared copy of that library. In a bundling system, you first have to work out which of your applications contain an instance of that library and then see if the application vendors have provided a security patch. If any one of them hasn't released a patch and you can't patch it yourself, then you either have to stop using that application or else accept remaining exposed to the vulnerability. The bundling approach also leads to applications being much bigger than they need to be. That isn't much of a problem for desktop or server systems these days, but can still be an issue in the embedded world. As far as the idea of making bundling easier goes, we already implemented that in 2.6 and 3.0. It's the whole reason that zip files and directories are directly executable now: the named zip file or directory itself is automatically added to sys.path, so the top level "__main__.py" in that location can freely import any other co-located modules and packages. Cheers, Nick. -- Nick Coghlan | ncogh...@gmail.com | Brisbane, Australia --------------------------------------------------------------- _______________________________________________ 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
