[Distutils] how to easily consume just the parts of eggs that are good for you

[Greg Ewing]

John J Lee wrote:
> If you have a network connection, about the only reason for not wanting 
> an app to be "installed" is that it has changed the behaviour of your 
> system somehow, just by being in the "installed" state.

If you have a continuous high-speed network connection and
aren't concerned about cost or bandwidth use or disk space
taken up, it might make sense to have apps downloaded on demand,
cached, etc. But not everyone works that way. I don't, much of
the time. I prefer it when downloading an app and putting it
on my system is an explicit step.

I know you can use 0install that way, but I do it already on
my MacOSX system without needing any special tool. :-)

>> Yes, ROX is very MacOSX-like, but I don't think it has
>> anything to do with 0install.
> 
> 0install provides one way of implementing that kind of system.

But it doesn't, if by "that kind of system" you mean one where
an app or library is just an ordinary filesystem object. A
0install app appears to be very far from ordinary.

> If you 
> want to share data, it's a better way than unshared directories of 
> files.

There's nothing to stop a MacOSX user from putting an app in
a publically-readable place and letting other people use it.
I don't see what the big deal is there.

>> If ROX apps included a checksum, and the system verified it
>> before running the app, that would give you the same thing
>> trust-wise, I think.
> 
> That's an interesting idea, but how would the system find the app?

The system doesn't have to find the app -- the user finds the
app, using the same techniques he uses to find anything else in
the filesystem he's interested in.

-- 
Greg