[Python-Dev] Internal documentation for egg formats now available

[M.-A. Lemburg]

Phillip J. Eby wrote:
> Please see 
> http://svn.python.org/projects/sandbox/trunk/setuptools/doc/formats.txt for 
> source, or http://peak.telecommunity.com/DevCenter/EggFormats for an 
> HTML-formatted version.
> 
> Included are summary descriptions of the formats of all of the standard 
> metadata produced by setuptools, along with pointers to the existing 
> manuals that describe the syntax used for representing requirements, entry 
> points, etc. as text.  The .egg, .egg-info, and .egg-link formats and 
> layouts are also specified, along with the filename syntax used to embed 
> project/version/Python version/platform metadata.  Last, but not least, 
> there are detailed explanations of how resources (such as C extensions) are 
> extracted on-the-fly and cached, how C extensions get imported from 
> zipfiles, and how EasyInstall works around the limitations of Python's 
> default sys.path initialization.
> 
> If there's anything else you'd like in there, please let me know.

Thanks.

Just read that you are hijacking site.py for setuptools'
"just works" purposes.

Please be aware that by allowing .pth files in all PYTHONPATH
directories you are opening up a security hole - anyone with
write-permission to one of these .pth files could manipulate
other user's use of Python.

That's the reason why only site-packages .pth files are
taken into account, since normally only root has write
access to this directory.

The added startup time for scanning PYTHONPATH for .pth
files and processing them is also not mentioned in the
documentation. Every Python invocation would have to pay
for this - regardless of whether eggs are used or not.


I really wish that we could agree on an installation format
for package (meta) data that does *not* rely on ZIP files.
All the unnecessary magic that you have in your design would
just go away - together with most of the issues people on this
list have with it.

-- 
Marc-Andre Lemburg
eGenix.com

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