[Distutils] Distutils-SIG Digest, Vol 60, Issue 29

[Stanley A. Klein]

On Mon, April 14, 2008 1:37 am, distutils-sig-request at python.org wrote:

> Message: 4
> Date: Mon, 14 Apr 2008 14:16:13 +1200
> From: Greg Ewing <greg.ewing at canterbury.ac.nz>
> Subject: Re: [Distutils] how to easily consume just the parts of eggs
> 	that are good for you
> To: distutils-sig at python.org
>
> David Cournapeau wrote:
>> There are two ways of looking at it, I think. One is to think that linux
>> FHS (and unix in general) is totally broken.
>
> I don't think it's *totally* broken. I do think it goes
> overboard with splitting things up and scattering them
> around. I understand that there are reasons for some of
> that, but I don't see why e.g. includes, library files
> and other resources used by a package can't be kept
> together.
>

Linux and the FHS aren't broken at all.  They are just designed around a
different concept than the single-user, proprietary software concept that
Windows and Mac OS X are based on.  They are based on multi-user systems
with reusable software and multi-use software tools.  They provide a
natural environment for community developed and maintained
Free/Open-Source Software (FOSS).

You can think of Linux splitting things up and scattering them around.  I
think of Windows putting things that don't belong together in the same
place just because they happen to be supplied by the same provider.  Every
Windows application is monolithic, because a proprietary provider who
depends on something other than the OS buys it, pays the royalties for its
use, hides it from the user by compiling it into the application binary,
and includes it in the software package supplied.

This doesn't usually happen in Unix or Linux.  Providers depend on each
other.  That's the reason for dependencies.  Trying to use FOSS on Windows
creates issues that have to be addressed.

BTW, if eggs are analogous to jars (as Eby states), eggs are absolutely
not a complete packaging system and were never intended to be so.  If you
look at a java-related rpm package, you are likely to see a number of jar
files along with a lot of other files.


Stan Klein