Mailman 3 September 2008 - Distutils-SIG

Two fixes (at last)
by Greg Ward 29 Apr '18

29 Apr '18

Hi all -- at long last, I have fixed two problems that a couple people noticed a while ago: * I folded in Amos Latteier's NT patches almost verbatim -- just changed an `os.path.sep == "/"' to `os.name == "posix"' and added some comments bitching about the inadequacy of the current library installation model (I think this is Python's fault, but for now Distutils is slavishly aping the situation in Python 1.5.x) * I fixed the problem whereby running "setup.py install" without doing anything else caused a crash (because 'build' hadn't yet been run). Now, the 'install' command automatically runs 'build' before doing anything; to make this bearable, I added a 'have_run' dictionary to the Distribution class to keep track of which commands have been run. So now not only are command classes singletons, but their 'run' method can only be invoked once -- both restrictions enforced by Distribution. The code is checked into CVS, or you can download a snapshot at http://www.python.org/sigs/distutils-sig/distutils-19990607.tar.gz Hope someone (Amos?) can try the new version under NT. Any takers for Mac OS? BTW, all parties involved in the Great "Where Do We Install Stuff?" Debate should take a good, hard look at the 'set_final_options()' method of the Install class in distutils/install.py; this is where all the policy decisions about where to install files are made. Currently it apes the Python 1.5 situation as closely as I could figure it out. Obviously, this is subject to change -- I just don't know to *what* it will change! Greg -- Greg Ward - software developer gward(a)cnri.reston.va.us Corporation for National Research Initiatives 1895 Preston White Drive voice: +1-703-620-8990 Reston, Virginia, USA 20191-5434 fax: +1-703-620-0913

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Package versioning
by Timothy Docker 29 Apr '18

29 Apr '18

Hi all, I've been aware that the distutils sig has been simmerring away, but until recently it has not been directly relevant to what I do. I like the look of the proposed api, but have one question. Will this support an installed system that has multiple versions of the same package installed simultaneously? If not, then this would seem to be a significant limitation, especially when dependencies between packages are considered. Assuming it does, then how will this be achieved? I am presently managing this with a messy arrangement of symlinks. A package is installed with its version number in it's name, and a separate directory is created for an application with links from the unversioned package name to the versioned one. Then I just set the pythonpath to this directory. A sample of what the directory looks like is shown below. I'm sure there is a better solution that this, and I'm not sure that this would work under windows anyway (does windows have symlinks?). So, has this SIG considered such versioning issues yet? Cheers, Tim -------------------------------------------------------------- Tim Docker timd(a)macquarie.com.au Quantative Applications Division Macquarie Bank -------------------------------------------------------------- qad16:qad $ ls -l lib/python/ total 110 drwxr-xr-x 2 mts mts 512 Nov 11 11:23 1.1 -r--r----- 1 root mts 45172 Sep 1 1998 cdrmodule_0_7_1.so drwxr-xr-x 2 mts mts 512 Sep 1 1998 chart_1_1 drwxr-xr-x 3 mts mts 512 Sep 1 1998 Fnorb_0_7_1 dr-xr-x--- 3 mts mts 512 Nov 11 11:21 Fnorb_0_8 drwxr-xr-x 3 mts mts 1536 Mar 3 12:45 mts_1_1 dr-xr-x--- 7 mts mts 512 Nov 11 11:22 OpenGL_1_5_1 dr-xr-x--- 2 mts mts 1024 Nov 11 11:23 PIL_0_3 drwxr-xr-x 3 mts mts 512 Sep 1 1998 Pmw_0_7 dr-xr-x--- 2 mts mts 512 Nov 11 11:21 v3d_1_1 qad16:qad $ ls -l lib/python/1.1 total 30 lrwxrwxrwx 1 root other 29 Apr 10 10:43 _glumodule.so -> ../OpenGL_1_5_1/_glumodule.so lrwxrwxrwx 1 root other 30 Apr 10 10:43 _glutmodule.so -> ../OpenGL_1_5_1/_glutmodule.so lrwxrwxrwx 1 root other 22 Apr 10 10:43 _imaging.so -> ../PIL_0_3/_imaging.so lrwxrwxrwx 1 root other 36 Apr 10 10:43 _opengl_nummodule.so -> ../OpenGL_1_5_1/_opengl_nummodule.so lrwxrwxrwx 1 root other 27 Apr 10 10:43 _tkinter.so -> ../OpenGL_1_5_1/_tkinter.so lrwxrwxrwx 1 mts mts 21 Apr 10 10:43 cdrmodule.so -> ../cdrmodule_0_7_1.so lrwxrwxrwx 1 mts mts 12 Apr 10 10:43 chart -> ../chart_1_1 lrwxrwxrwx 1 root other 12 Apr 10 10:43 Fnorb -> ../Fnorb_0_8 lrwxrwxrwx 1 mts mts 12 Apr 10 10:43 mts -> ../mts_1_1 lrwxrwxrwx 1 root other 15 Apr 10 10:43 OpenGL -> ../OpenGL_1_5_1 lrwxrwxrwx 1 root other 33 Apr 10 10:43 opengltrmodule.so -> ../OpenGL_1_5_1/opengltrmodule.so lrwxrwxrwx 1 root other 33 Apr 10 10:43 openglutil_num.so -> ../OpenGL_1_5_1/openglutil_num.so lrwxrwxrwx 1 root other 10 Apr 10 10:43 PIL -> ../PIL_0_3 lrwxrwxrwx 1 mts mts 10 Apr 10 10:43 Pmw -> ../Pmw_0_7 lrwxrwxrwx 1 root other 10 Apr 10 10:43 v3d -> ../v3d_1_1

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[Distutils-sig] distutils charter and interscript
by John Skaller 29 Apr '18

29 Apr '18

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Re: [Distutils] how to easily consume just the parts of eggs that are good for you
by Stanley A. Klein 09 Oct '09

09 Oct '09

On Wed, April 9, 2008 10:05 pm, Greg Ewing <greg.ewing(a)canterbury.ac.nz> wrote: > Message: 4 > Date: Thu, 10 Apr 2008 12:59:39 +1200 > From: Greg Ewing <greg.ewing(a)canterbury.ac.nz> > Subject: Re: [Distutils] how to easily consume just the parts of eggs > that are good for you > To: distutils-sig(a)python.org > > Paul Moore wrote: > >> I believe that Mac OS X goes for an even simpler structure - >> applications store *everything* in the one directory, so that >> install/uninstall is simply a directory copy/remove. > > Yep, and thereby cuts the whole gordian knot, throws the > pieces on the fire and burns them. :-) > > Package managers have always seemed to me to be an > excessively complex solution to a problem that needn't > have existed in the first place. > > I keep hoping that someday Linux will support something > like MacOSX application bundles and frameworks, but I > haven't seen any sign of it yet. > I think this discussion arises because the operating systems we are dealing with are based on very different concepts. Windows and Mac are fundamentally single user systems that have added capabilities for multiple users and are intended to be used with proprietary software. Those considerations lead to minimal dependencies among packages (each proprietary provider needs to control its own package, except for the OS), individual users serving as their own sysadmins, and similar factors. Any dependencies in the proprietary software are hidden from the user because the provider has compiled the dependencies into the binary code they supply. Unix/Linux are fundamentally multi-user systems with a distinct role for a sysadmin. Linux and the BSD's are intended to be used with Free/Open Source Software (FOSS), and Unix originated the Software Tools concept in which individual, relatively simple, separately-developed tools are combined to perform complex tasks. Both FOSS and the Software Tools concept encourage dependencies. The need for package managers arises out of the Unix FHS. If you look at the FHS, it is clearly designed to simplify the job of the sysadmin in a multi-user system that uses FOSS and Software Tools. For example, deciding what to backup and how often to do it in a Unix/Linux system is relatively easy for the sysadmin. All the installed software is in certain top-level directories. All the config files are in /etc. All the logs. caches, spools, web pages, process locks, and certain other data are in /var. All the user data is in /home or its sysadmin-determined equivalents. If the sysadmin needs space, deleting files in /tmp will not cause a problem. In summary, Python is being used on systems that have very different underlying OS use cases. To some extent, the natural use case for Python is closest to that of Linux/Unix. Running Python on Windows/Mac requires adapting for those platforms some of the kinds of tools that simplify operations on Linux/Unix systems. This discussion is essentially about how far that goes, how to accomplish it, and how to remain compatible with the existing tools on Linux/Unix. Stan Klein

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eggs and Python Unicode variants (UCS2, UCS4)
by Martijn Faassen 29 May '09

29 May '09

Hi there, In the lxml project (http://codespeak.net/lxml), we've just noticed the following problem with lxml eggs: you can easy_install an egg that won't work for your Python. This is because Python can be compiled with either 2 or 4 bytes unicode as its internal representation. Any egg that contains compiled C code that uses unicode such as lxml will run into trouble: if it's compiled with a 4 bytes unicode Python, it won't work on a 2 bytes unicode Python, and vice versa. This problem is fairly common in Linux. Many distributions such as Ubuntu and Fedora compile their python with 4 bytes unicode internal representation. If you compile a Python interpreter by hand it defaults to 2 bytes unicode, however. Hand-building a Python interpreter is done fairly commonly by Linux sysadmins for various reasons. It would therefore be very nice if it became possible to make eggs for the different unicode compilation options of Python. This configuration dimension is a real world issue for any binary Python module that does anything with unicode text.. In an earlier mail to this list: http://mail.python.org/pipermail/distutils-sig/2005-October/005222.html M.-A. Lemburg and Phillip Eby had the following discussion: [MAL] >>Please make sure that your eggs catch all possible >>Python binary build dimensions: >> >>* Python version >>* Python Unicode variant (UCS2, UCS4) >>* OS name >>* OS version >>* Platform architecture (e.g. 32-bit vs. 64-bit) [PJE] >As far as I know, all of this except the Unicode variant is captured in >distutils' get_platform(). And if it's not, it should be, since it >affects any other kind of bdist mechanism. I'm not sure whether this means this needs to be escalated from setuptools to the Python interpreter level itself. With this mail, I've done the job escalating this lxml problem to what appears to be the right place, though. :) Thanks, Martijn

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unicode bug in distutils
by Tarek Ziadé 05 Apr '09

05 Apr '09

Hello, I have created a setup.py file for distirbution and I bumped into a small bug when i tried to set my name in the contact field (Tarek Ziadé) Using string (utf8 file): setup( maintainer="Tarek Ziadé" ) leads to: File "/Library/Frameworks/Python.framework/Versions/2.5/lib/python2.5/distutils/command/register.py", line 162, in send_metadata auth) File "/Library/Frameworks/Python.framework/Versions/2.5/lib/python2.5/distutils/command/register.py", line 257, in post_to_server value = unicode(value).encode("utf-8") UnicodeDecodeError: 'ascii' codec can't decode byte 0xc3 in position 10: ordinal not in range(128) Using unicode: setup( maintainer=u"Tarek Ziadé" ) leads to: File "/Library/Frameworks/Python.framework/Versions/2.5/lib/python2.5/distutils/dist.py", line 1094, in write_pkg_file file.write('Author: %s\n' % self.get_contact() ) UnicodeEncodeError: 'ascii' codec can't encode character u'\xe9' in position 18: ordinal not in range(128) I would propose a patch for this problem but i don't know what would be the best input (i guess unicode for names) Regards Tarek -- Tarek Ziadé | Association AfPy | www.afpy.org Blog FR | http://programmation-python.org Blog EN | http://tarekziade.wordpress.com/

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Re: [Distutils] "just use debian"
by Chris Withers 10 Oct '08

10 Oct '08

Nicolas Chauvat wrote: >> Also some of the Debian Python packages are broken or grossly >> out-of-date. > > File a bug report :) Yes, because that automatically frees up the packager's time to work on these issues... > My problem with setup tools is that they come from windows I don't think that's the case at all. > is (almost) no package management system. The consequence is that > their author reinvented the wheel, but limited it to Python, then > moved to eggs and made things worse. Yes, the egg format is annoying. No, I don't think having a package management system that targets only python packages is a bad idea. > My main tool is Python, but I have many other tools on my system. I > do not want to have as many package management utilities as > "subsystems". Then I suggest you volunteer to maintain the debian packages for every single python package. > If I have one tool for Python, one for Java, one for C, > one for Fortran, one for C libraries, one for Gnome, etc. integration > becomes a nightmare. If you have projects this large, then you likely want to roll your own OS packages anyway. > [Please note that for an experienced Debian developer, making the > initial package of a Python module can be a matter of half an hour to > a couple hours and releasing a new version a matter of minutes.] ...and for someone not using Debian or not an experienced Debian developer? Despite being a fan of Debian, I'm well aware of just how "friendly" a community it can be to the new user... cheers, Chris -- Simplistix - Content Management, Zope & Python Consulting - http://www.simplistix.co.uk

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PEP for distutils
by Tarek Ziadé 03 Oct '08

03 Oct '08

Hello Let's write PEPs ! I started to write a new PEP (well a wiki page in fact...) that describes a new package called "pypi" that would be dedicated to package registering and uploading mechanisms. It would also provide enhancements like a proper password hash, or deepers metadata controls http://wiki.python.org/moin/A_new_pypi_module Any opinions about this PEP ? I tried to include all the problems people are having with register and upload. I linked it here in the page where I am trying to summarize the current state of distutils http://wiki.python.org/moin/Distribute (work in progress) Regards Tarek -- Tarek Ziadé | Association AfPy | www.afpy.org Blog FR | http://programmation-python.org Blog EN | http://tarekziade.wordpress.com/

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Re: [Distutils] "Python Package Management Sucks"
by Chris Withers 03 Oct '08

03 Oct '08

(I'll be CC'ing the distutils sig in to these replies as this discussion probably belongs there...) Nicolas Chauvat wrote: >> The slides for my two talks can be found here: >> >> http://www.simplistix.co.uk/presentations > > "Python Package Management Sucks" > > Install debian and get back to productive tasks. This is an almost troll-like answer. See page 35 of the presentation. If you're too lazy, here's a re-hash: - there are lots of different operating systems - even with Linux, there are many different package management systems - all the package management systems behave differently and expect packages to be set up differently for them - expecting package developers to shoulder this burden is unfair and results in various bitrotting repackaged versions of python packages rather than just one up-to-date version maintained by the entity originating the python package - Adobe Photoshop Plugins, Firefox Add-ons, etc do not delegate their management to an OS package manager. Packages are Python's "plugins" and so should get the same type of consistent, cross-platform package management targetted at the application in question, which is Python in this case. cheers, Chris -- Simplistix - Content Management, Zope & Python Consulting - http://www.simplistix.co.uk

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Msgfmt in distutils?
by Andrew Price 01 Oct '08

01 Oct '08

Hi, Distutils has made my life easier as an python application author and packager for some time but when it comes to generating and distributing message catalogues for translations, things get unexpectedly tricky. It would be nice to be able to do something like, --------- from distutils.core import setup setup(name="foo", version="1.0", description="A handy, translated application", ... po_files = [('share/locales', ['po/*.po'])] ) ---------- and have distutils do the right thing with the .po files at build time (generate .mo files from them) and at install time (install them into PREFIX/share/locales/LC_MESSAGES/, or wherever the distribution is configured to put them). My big question is, are there plans to add msgfmt functionality into distutils? Googling tells me there was some discussion about this back in 2003 but I can't find any sign of progress since then. Regards, -- Andy Price

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