On Wed, Jul 1, 2009 at 1:44 PM, Paul Moore
"Adding a RECORD file"
You say "at installation time" - please clarify. Do you only mean setup.py install? What about bdist_wininst and bdist_msi? What about third party bdist style tools? How will they ensure they get a RECORD file?
"The RECORD format"
The line separator shouldn't be os-dependent. What value is used for a pure-python (ie, platform independent) package? Unless the file is generated when the install is done, in which case see the previous point...
Absolute file paths - this implies that RECORD has to be generated by the installer (which is the only place that knows absolute paths) which means that every bdist_xxx installer has to write its own RECORD file. Does the PEP offer no support for this? In any case, the bdist_wininst and bdist_msi code (which is core distutils) will need to be amended to manage RECORD files appropriately.
Since all bdist_* commands are using the install command in a temporary build directory to create a binary distribution, the RECORD file (and the INSTALLER) will be pre-generated then installed alongside the packages/modules. For absolute paths now that gets installed, what would be the difference between the pre-generated RECORD file and the RECORD file installed on the win32 target system, if any ?