[Distutils] install_recommends proposal

[Ian Bicking]

Marius Gedminas wrote:
> On Wed, Sep 26, 2007 at 10:38:49PM +0200, Martijn Faassen wrote:
>> I understand how the name "install_recommends" could be confusing 
>> terminology
> 
> Yes it is
> 
>> given the way package managers use the term 'recommended 
>> packages', which means extra that you could install too to get more 
>> features. "install_prefers" instead?
>>
>> An alternative would be to expand the syntax of install_requires and 
>> extra_require to allow the recommended version number hint. Something 
>> like this:
>>
>> install_requires = [
>>     'foo (1.2.1)',
>>     'bar >= 1.3 (1.3.2)',
>>    ]
> 
> A really human-readable version would be:
> 
>   install_requires = [
>       'foo (prefer 1.2.1)',
>       'bar >= 1.3 (prefer 1.3.2)',
>      ]

This is kind of an old thread, but I personally would really like 
install_recommends.  One use case is to recommend packages that are not 
strictly required.  E.g., I have WSGI applications that work well with 
PasteScript for serving the application, but PasteScript isn't actually 
required.  This leads to an awkward situation where I have to choose 
whether to require a package that isn't actually needed (e.g., it's 
never imported anywhere), or leave it out and confuse people who install 
the application.  If preferred versions were part of install_requires, I 
don't see how I could achieve this.

The workingenv requirements, and now poach-eggs, try to solve this by 
installing a description of packages instead of just a single package, 
but this would make that mostly unnecessary.


-- 
Ian Bicking : ianb at colorstudy.com : http://blog.ianbicking.org
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