On Sat, Jun 26, 2010 at 6:12 AM, James Y Knight <foom@fuhm.net> wrote:
However, then you have to also consider python packages made up of multiple distro packages -- like twisted or zope. Twisted includes some C extensions in the core package. But then there are other twisted modules (installed under a "twisted.foo" name) which do not include C extensions. If the base twisted package is installed under a version-specific directory, then all of the submodule packages need to also be installed under the same version-specific directory (and thus built for all versions).
In the past, it has proven somewhat tricky to coordinate which directory the modules for package "foo" should be installed in, because you need to know whether *any* of the related packages includes a native ".so" file, not just the current package.
The converse situation, where a base package did *not* get installed into a version-specific directory because it includes no native code, but a submodule *does* include a ".so" file, is even trickier.
I think there are two major ways to tackle this: - allow multiple versions of a .so file within a single directory (i.e Barry's current suggestion) - enhanced namespace packages, allowing a single package to be spread across multiple directories, some of which may be Python version specific (i.e. modifications to PEP 382 to support references to version-specific directories) I think a new PEP is definitely in order, especially to explain why enhancing PEP 382 to support saying "look over here for the .so files for this version" isn't a preferable approach. Cheers, Nick. -- Nick Coghlan | ncoghlan@gmail.com | Brisbane, Australia