Ian Bicking wrote:
On Fri, Jan 30, 2009 at 12:39 PM, Floris Bruynooghe <floris.bruynooghe@gmail.com <mailto:floris.bruynooghe@gmail.com>> wrote:
I imagine things like libdir, prefix, datadir, docdir and other things copied from autoconf. Where the defaults would be something like:
prefix = sys.prefix libdir = sys.prefix/lib/pythonX.Y/site-packages/pkgname datadir = sys.prefix/share/mypackage docdir = sys.prefix/share/doc/mypackage
I wouldn't want to use those. What goes in libdir, what goes in datadir? I don't know, and frankly the distinctions start getting really arbitrary.
They are not arbitrary - they come from standard usage and have a rationale, at least on Unix (datadir for arch independent, and libdir for arch dependent, to simplify). But you mostly do not need to care, as a developer: .py files would be considered as data files, extensions as arch-dependent, etc... The main category which needs special care is documentation, and I think I am not the only one thinking that's one thing missing in distutils ATM.
I would rather see something like pkg_resources existing API, where there is some file that maps out how the local names of files (where they'd be in a checkout) map to their installed location, then the pkg_resources code could finds the real location of the file.
I am not sure I understand how this would help OS packagers - this does not sound as the same problem at all. David