Ben Finney wrote:
Rakotomandimby Mihamina <mihamina@gulfsat.mg> writes:
For example, debian packaging what is on pypi must be straighforward. (same for RPM based distribution and other systems)
Packaging for Debian is much more about following the policy, which deliberately involves human intervention and judgement, and can't very well be automated. RPM, as I understand it, is more lax and a simple RPM can be generated quite automatically.
A .deb can also be automated up to a certain level. Even for packages like numpy, there is not much needed. Also, the official debian policy is mandatory for adoption into official repositories - but if I need to push a simple .deb to colleagues for a new package of mine, I don't want/need to spend that much time. For example, if distutils were to support the --*dir options of autoconf plus all the related metadata to tag files accordingly, it would make the task quite simple. Even for complex package, this would make packaging and package update simpler for package maintainer. If I look at the debian dir for the numpy package (in Ubuntu), there is really not much needed: the .install files to tag which files to install for which package, adding debian specific files (README.debian and co). Most of it if not all could be removed with the corresponding distutils support (which would not be .deb specific in any way, and would help rpm, .pkg and even windows packaging as well though .e.g. nsis files). David