At 11:05 PM 12/29/2005 +0800, Jeff Pitman wrote:

I see that --single-version-externally-managed has been added as an option so that .deb/.rpm packaging can take advantage of that relying upon apt/yum/smart to take care of business. Hopefully, this will be pushed out soon.

FYI, unless there's some policy preventing it, you can use the current SVN snapshot as a basis for a Debian package of setuptools. If built from a source checkout, it will correctly include its Subversion revision number as part of its name, e.g. "0.6a9dev-r41780". In setuptools' version numbering, this is an *older* release than "0.6a9", so when the final 0.6a9 comes out it will replace the "dev" versions. I realize that this isn't necessarily the same thing as how Debian package versions work, but I assume it must have some facility for pre-release tags. If all else fails, you could treat it as "0.6a8-r41780" instead, which might be a more compatible numbering approach.

At this point, the only thing left on my to-do list for 0.6a9 is more documentation for EasyInstall, so don't let that stop you from packaging it. The only reason to wait would be to see if anybody reports bugs with the current version, which probably won't happen until *after* 0.6a9 is released. :)