On Sat, Mar 22, 2008 at 12:33:49PM +0100, "Martin v. Löwis" wrote:
The data isn't for them to use to meet their use cases, it's for them to *provide* so that Python tools don't stomp on, uninstall, or otherwise interfere with files installed by the system. In other words, for system packagers, it's a communication from the system to Python, rather than the other way around. Even though the distutils will build the file in the bdist, the system packaging tools would be free to generate their own file listing and signatures and such.
Ok, that's a reasonable requirement. It will be difficult to implement, though, as it will require Linux distributors (in particular) to include the database snippets in their packages.
Essentially, one would have to contribute patches to all the distributions (we care about, at least), and then nag the respective maintainers to include these patches.
Not true. You just need to make sure that "setup.py install" creates that database. With the proposed format of the database this is just a file in the correct location - exactly for this reason. Next time the distribution will build the package that database file will be in place. I still maintain that an installdb for the system packages doesn't bring anything to the party as it would be in a system-only directory. But I've argued that in my other emails... Regards Floris -- Debian GNU/Linux -- The Power of Freedom www.debian.org | www.gnu.org | www.kernel.org