[Distutils] relative package imports, version , numbering, yadda yadda

[Greg Stein]

On Tue, 14 Sep 1999, James C. Ahlstrom wrote:
> Skip Montanaro wrote:
> > So I started looking around at the versions and dates of various copies of
> > asynchat.py.
> >...
> > What's apparently been happening is that people have picked up asyncore and
> > asynchat at various time and stuck them in their own CVS repositories
> > without somehow freezing the Id string of the version they originally got
> > from Sam Rushing.  It's not clear what the differences are until you compare
> > the actual files.  It turns out that the Zope 2.0 and Medusa versions have
> 
> Yes, I have had this happen too.  I am unwilling and unable to risk
> this sort of problem at a customer's site.  So I ship a complete
> app with no external dependencies.  Also crude but effective.

We did the same with the Python-based apps/servers at Microsoft.

Merchant Server was a big frozen app (based on the non-sensical
requirement to hide the fact that Python was used). In Site Server 2.0 and
3.0, we used a mini-install -- just the Lib files we needed plus our
extensions.

In the Site Server (non-frozen) case, we did use the registry, but built
the interpreter with a custom "version". SS20 and SS30. In the registry,
this meant we used Python/PythonCore/SS20 (I think that's the layout).

Worked great, no complaints.

Oh, and the DLLs we put into the system directory (pretty necessary for
COM) were named SS20<whatever>.DLL to prevent conflicts.

I'm not sure who said it, but I agree with the following statement:

* ship your app as a complete black box, or ship your app with
dependencies on modules/packages [at the top level]

This monkeying around with "mx.foo" working where mx is at the top level
or is embedded is just scary.


That said, personally, I would just do something like the following at the
startup of my app: 

ZopeImporter("zopedir").install()

[where ZopeImporter is a imputil.Importer subclass]

The importer would just Do The Right Thing for all imports, and only defer
to the Python library for things that weren't shipped with Zope (the empty
set?)

Cheers,
-g

--
Greg Stein, http://www.lyra.org/