On Fri, 18 Dec 1998, Konrad Hinsen wrote:
The package installer we are currently discussing could handle that as well - almost. It should in any case be possible to install several packages at the same time; otherwise packages with circular dependencies could not be installed at all. So if the installer could also treat an archive of packages (in whatever convenient format), it would be easy to set up distributions of multiple packages.
The reason I said "almost" is that the Python interpreter must always be there first. At least for Unix, I see no way around this, and for other platforms I don't know. And (again for Unix) I don't think anyone would object to install two things for some application.
I haven't had a chance to look at all the proposals in detail, but I just wanted to remind folks that not all "extensions" are really Python extensions, but they'd be nice things to have in a distribution anyway -- anything from non-Python specific libraries (netcdf, gd, t1lib, whatever) to large things like Tcl/Tk. Tcl/Tk is especially important for the usual reasons. In a word, some thought should be put into thinking about other non-controllable systems (e.g., no matter what Greg W says, Ousterhout isn't going to follow his recommendations =). I don't think we can or should be all-encompassing, but *thinking* a bit about these problems could avoid some pitfalls. --david