[Catalog-sig] [Distutils] PyPI - Evolve our own or reuse existing package systems?

[Luis Bruno]

Hello there,

Jeff Shell wrote:
> This goes into a deeper frustration I've had in the past: I installed
> MySQL on my desktop (Mac OS X) using a disk image / .pkg installer
> downloaded from MySQL's web site. Then I think I tried installing a
> python package from MacPorts (maybe just the mysql bindings?) that had
> a MySQL dependency. It didn't detect that I already had MySQL
> installed, and MacPorts then tried installing it on its own.

IIRC there are variants in some MacPorts that removed dependencies
from their setup.py-like file and used the system ones.

It can also be dealt with by creating phantom-packages which provide
the virtual "name" mysql-client, for example (which is how it's been
done in apt-get repositories, etc, etc.).


> Even on the most barren of machines, it's relatively
> easy to build and install Python from source.

I can agree with that.