anatoly techtonik wrote:
If it is impossible to ship the whole package management system then at least Python distribution may carry small bootstrap script for it. When user tries to execute package management tools, it warns him that these are not installed and gives a hint where to get them::
python -m easy_install bla-bla-bla Error: easy_install module is not shipped with this Python release. Please execute the following command to install the latest version.
python -m easy_bootstrap
Note that this idea has come up before and is *much* more likely to get traction than including a full package management system. The nature of package management is such that tying an installation system to the release cycle of the core interpreter is unlikely to end well. A bootstrapping tool that only knows how to download a single specific package would be much easier to keep stable. Even such a scaled back idea is still far from a certainty to be accepted though, given the number of people who vehemently object to duplicating any significant part of the functionality of the system package management tools (i.e. RPM, apt et al). At this point, the packaging story is in the hands of distutils-sig and they're pressing forward with several initiatives that will permit the construction of more robust and reliable Python-specific package management systems (such as supporting listing and uninstallation of installed packages). Cheers, Nick. -- Nick Coghlan | ncoghlan@gmail.com | Brisbane, Australia ---------------------------------------------------------------