[Baypiggies] py2exe. Python(x,y). Distribution issues.

[m h]

On Thu, Apr 24, 2008 at 7:44 PM, Stephen McInerney
<spmcinerney at hotmail.com> wrote:
>
>
> Yes these are separate issues to SCons per se, but thematically related.
>
> I'm talking about multiple things (especially with Windows installers, but
> also in general):
>
> - can I install package X, give my existing libraries and packages?
> - will it clobber my environment? (e.g overwrite the path or assume it is
> free to overwrite
>   anything in the install-tree of the current Python install, often without
> backing-up?)
> - do I have conflicting versions? must I first upgrade/deinstall dependency
> package D?
> - after I've installed, how do I go about installing an update of package
> D.2?
>   (/can I? am I stuck with that version until a new version of my package X
> comes out)
> - what enhances are needed in distutils framework to support automating
> these things?
>   http://docs.python.org/dist/dist.html
> - can package Y coexist with X, if they use different versions of anything?
> - is the installer graceful enough to detect these issues upfront and warn
> me, or does it
> simply fall over halfway through or worse still, break my existing install?
> - I discussed with the scientific users at the April meeting, they say these
> are real issues
> - if users start writing cross-platform scientific apps using Python, this
> stuff will pop up.
>
> - virtualenv sounds useful, anyone have experience with it? Does it extend
> to foreign
> dependencies (e.g. C++/Fortran libs)?

At this point, you really want a package manager, rather than the
python centric distutils world.  To get around this at my previous
company we started using (and contributing to) gentoo-prefix [0].
(You can think of it as a sandboxed package manager similar to fink or
openpkg that runs on a posix (linux/macos/solaris/) box in it's own
directory.  A virtualenv on steroids.  Portage was a wonderful package
manager for our purposes.  We were running
c/c++/java/perl/php/python/ruby/mysql/postgres/tomcat/apache/lighty....
under this environment. Some of my co-workers even got it running
under windows.  It proved to work out quite nice.  You might want to
look into something like this.  If you want to take it a step further
then you are into the vmware/xen realm.

-matt

0 - http://www.gentoo.org/proj/en/gentoo-alt/prefix/index.xml