Mailman 3 February 2009 - 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

3 2

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 04 Apr '09

04 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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patch: solving the two major things that people dislike about setuptools, part 1
by zooko 10 Mar '09

10 Mar '09

Folks: There are two things that cause a lot of people to object to the use of setuptools: that it changes the semantics of PYTHONPATH, making it impossible to override packages on the command-line, and that it doesn't work when you run "setup.py install --prefix=./some_dir". This patch addresses the first one. Currently, if you ever allow setuptools to write into your system directory (e.g. /usr/lib/python2.5/site-packages) then it will install a .pth file which changes the behavior of PYTHONPATH. This will prevent you from over-riding the installed package with a specific package on the command-line, such as: PYTHONPATH=./that-version-of-Twisted/ python ./my_script.py Many people find this behavior of setuptools objectionable [1, 2, 3, plus personal correspondance when I did my "Why do you hate setuptools?" survey]. Fortunately it seems possible to preserve the precedence of PYTHONPATH modules while still having installed eggs override installed non-eggs, as motivated in [4]. Sat Nov 15 11:59:32 MST 2008 zooko(a)zooko.com * leave the PYTHONPATH dirs at the front of the sys.path This is in accordance with http://www.python.org/doc/2.5.2/inst/search-path.html , which says "The PYTHONPATH variable can be set to a list of paths that will be added to the beginning of sys.path.", and it resolves an objection many people have which impels them to ban setuptools from systems they administrate. --- old-dw-0.6c9/setuptools/command/easy_install.py +++ new-dw-0.6c9/setuptools/command/easy_install.py @@ -1364,7 +1364,7 @@ "%s\n" "import sys; new=sys.path[sys.__plen:];" " del sys.path[sys.__plen:];" - " p=getattr(sys,'__egginsert',0); sys.path[p:p]=new;" + " p=getattr(sys,'__egginsert',len(os.environ.get ('PYTHONPATH','').split(os.pathsep))); sys.path[p:p]=new;" " sys.__egginsert = p+len(new)\n" ) % data Regards, Zooko --- http://allmydata.org -- Tahoe, the Least-Authority Filesystem http://allmydata.com -- back up all your files for $10/month [1] http://mail.python.org/pipermail/distutils-sig/2006-July/006492.html [2] https://www.dfwpython.org/pipermail/dfwpython/2007-June/000756.html [3] http://www.rittau.org/blog/20070726-02 [4] http://mail.python.org/pipermail/python-dev/2008-March/077918.html

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[zc.buildout] buildout to .deb package
by Tarek Ziadé 10 Mar '09

10 Mar '09

Hello I am starting to work on a script to generate a .deb package out of a buildout. Anyone has done anything in this area already ? Or is interested in working on it with me ? 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] PEP 376 for Distutils
by P.J. Eby 04 Mar '09

04 Mar '09

At 01:33 PM 2/24/2009 +0100, Tarek Ziadé wrote: >Philip wrote: > > So, the uninstallation code should simply not remove file(s) that > are referenced by more than one manifest in the target directory -- > a relatively simple, future-proof safeguard, that doesn't require > any specific knowledge of "namespace packages" per se. > > > >Sounds good. Although, it requires scanning the files again which is >not optimal, but the last point of this mail might be an idea to >adress this. Uninstallation isn't exactly a performance-critical activity. It's trivial to read targetdir/*/RECORD and build up a dictionary of file->package and package->file links; this is Python, after all. ;-) >2009/2/24 Joachim König <him(a)online.de>: > > An other option could be to put the egg-info dir into the package > itself, e.g. > > > > zlib/ > > __init__.py > > egg-info/ > > PKG-INFO > > MANIFEST > > RECORD > > ... > >This would require setuptools and pip to change the way they look for >the packages, More precisely, it would require pkg_resources to become ridiculously slow, by massively increasing the number of directories that need to be read at runtime to determine what packages are present. >Indeed. Having an index file would make things a whole lot simpler. For *whom*? Certainly not for system packaging tools (rpm, deb, et al). A design goal should be to allow system packaging tools to install a static file footprint: i.e., independent files with predefined content, and no post-processing steps. You can't do that with a shared file, which is why setuptools uses a .pth hack to install namespace packages when building packages for rpm et al. >I am wondering then if this is not an evolution of the .pth files. > >Although I find that having as many .pth file as we want is not robust. >It make things slow down when you have too many of them. > >So, I'd be in favor of a new, unique, optimized, index file, >with a set of functions located in pkgutil to read and write in it > >This index file could also index the namespace information, >in order to speed up the work needed to uninstall a package that >shares a namespace. So, .pth files are bad... let's make more? In fact, let's make a new thing that'll have its own, new bugs? So that we can have uninstalls that take only 1/10th of a second instead of 1/2 a second? The standard to beat in this area, I believe, is PEP 262. At the very least, if you're making any major changes in direction from that PEP, the rationale for those differences should be documented. (And consolidated index files are explicitly rejected by that PEP, with good reason.)

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Distutils standalone release
by Tarek Ziadé 27 Feb '09

27 Feb '09

Hello, the current Distutils trunk in Python is now in theory compatible with Python 2.3, as I fixed all the broken tests. My goal is to make a standalone release anyone can use, by replacing their Python's distutils with the newest one. This is important to speed up distutils improvements. There's one more task I need to address in order to make a standalone release of Distutils that will be usable under Python 2.3->2.6 : fix the problem described in this thread: http://mail.python.org/pipermail/distutils-sig/2009-February/011016.html otherwise all packages based on setuptools will be broken. I don't have a solution for that problem yet, and I am not sure if this should be adressed in setuptools, or in distutils, or on both sides. Although, I have seen some other problems along the way, and the test coverage is not sufficient to see everything. Any help on this will be appreciated to fix all the problem and improve the test coverage. If someone wants to give a hand, it's quite simple. 1/ install the standalone Distutils version located here: $ svn co http://svn.python.org/projects/distutils/trunk/ distutils $ cd distutils $ python setup.py install 2/ remove the original distutils package located in Python lib 3/ run an installation (or anything) of a setuptools-based package 4/ report all the bugs here :) Thanks Tarek -- Tarek Ziadé | Association AfPy | www.afpy.org Blog FR | http://programmation-python.org Blog EN | http://tarekziade.wordpress.com/

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