>>> Do you think it would be hard to update bdist_mpkg to support the new >>> format? It is nice to have a simple, pure python, way to build a.
> I don't know, I haven't looked into that yet (but will likely do so for the > python.org installers). I don't even know if the new format is properly > documented, with some luck its a closed binary format that can only be > created using Apple's tools. can those tools be called from a command-line, though? Requiring the dev tools to be installed to build a binary is not a big limitation. > I don't care too much about having something like bdist_mpkg because it has > only limited usefulness: installer.app has limited features (no uninstall, > very limited upgrade features), and it is hard to support virtualenv using > installer.app packages. True -- but it was nice to have something folks were familiar with and could just point and click on. Ages agio we had a discussion about having a tool that could be distributed with MacPython that could be associated with *.egg files and install eggs properly -- so newbies could just point and click on an agg. That would be nice, but in the end of the day, you're going to need to learn a bit about installing packages if you're really going to use Python anyway. >> Binary eggs do require setup tools or distribute, though that's not >> too heavy a lift. > > IIRC bdist_mpkg also uses setuptools, so that's not really a disadvantage > here. I meant you need setuptool sor distribute to install binary eggs -- requirements for building installers are a non-issue. > The real problem with binary eggs is that pip doesn't install them, and pip > seems to be the > new hotness w.r.t. package management at the moment. Indeed it does -- I hadn't realized it didn't install binary eggs -- I guess it's been a while since I've tried that! > There is some discussion about a new format (see > <http://www.python.org/dev/peps/pep-0427/>, but I'm not sure why that would > be better than eggs (other than that it isn't a setuptools egg). It looks like it has some advantages -- but it's not there now, and who knows if it ever will be... > The packaging landscape for Python still sucks and that might not change > anytime soon. :-( >> But setup tools used to get all confused by Universal binaries--has >> that been fixed? If not, it still may be easier to fix that than do a >> bdist_mpkg update. > > Setuptools works just fine with universal binaries, and always has. it build binaries fine, but easy_install got confused when you tried to install them. > It does treat 'universal' like any other architecture though, which means it > doesn't understand > that a binary egg with x86_64 only will work just fine when you are on a > x86_64 machine > with a python framework that supports i386 and x86_64. Whether or not that is > a problem > depends on your usecase. It would be nice to suport that use-case, though it's ripe for confusion for casual users. But at least a couple years ago, if you build a binary egg with setuptools with a universal Python, you'd get an egg that setuptools would get confused trying to install -- I can't remember the details, but often when a user tried to install it, easy+install would end up downloading the source and trying to build it. IIRC, often it had, in fact, successfully installed the binary, so you could kill the process and have it work -- but that wasn't the least bit clear to the user. I also have a vague recollection that you could fix that problem simply be re-naming teh binary but my memory is hazy there. It seems binary egg installation should be pretty easy, and it doesn't look like the pip folks are opposed to the idea, so maybe we could add that to pip, if distribute builds them properly anyway. -Chris -- Christopher Barker, Ph.D. Oceanographer Emergency Response Division NOAA/NOS/OR&R (206) 526-6959 voice 7600 Sand Point Way NE (206) 526-6329 fax Seattle, WA 98115 (206) 526-6317 main reception chris.bar...@noaa.gov _______________________________________________ Pythonmac-SIG maillist - Pythonmac-SIG@python.org http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/pythonmac-sig unsubscribe: http://mail.python.org/mailman/options/Pythonmac-SIG
