[Distutils] Package Meta-information Patch

[Michael Muller]

"Fred L. Drake, Jr." wrote:
>   No, it's fair to assume that the entire standard library is
> available.  That makes available ConfigParser, rfc822, shlib, and
> xmllib.  Writing a parser *is* an option, because it can be
> incorporated into distutils, but I don't see any need to do so with so
> many already-debugged modules available.


You are correct (with the exception of "shlib" - which I seem to be unable to
import; new module?).  However, none of these was as easy to use as this:

   execfile(os.path.join(default_location, name), globals)

Writing the file was slightly more difficult, it took a whopping 9 lines of
code.

>   And the first malevolent packager to add a "while 1" loop to his
> package metadata breaks the whole system.
>   If performance is really an issue, C and Java implementations can be
> built as needed.

Maybe I'm missing something here, but I fail to see how this possibility is
any more threatening than that of a malevolent packager installing viral code
on your system.

In the system that I have submitted, the packager does not directly provide
the meta-database file (sorry :-).  The manipulation of these files is
performed through the pkginfo module, which can encapsulate any kind of
information repository that you like.

Nonetheless, as I said, I'm not a particularly strong proponent of using
python code to store this information, myself.  If everybody thinks that this
approach sucks, that's fine.  I'm much more concerned with the content and the
interface to this system.

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michaelMuller = mmuller@enduden.com | http://www.cloud9.net/~proteus
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