[Distutils] distutils and mxDateTime

M.-A. Lemburg mal@lemburg.com
Tue, 25 Jan 2000 12:56:31 +0100


I've just tried out the latest distutils version with mxDateTime 1.3.0.
Some comments:

· The setup.py file does print a help screen, but does not
  tell the user which commands are available. I think this
  should be done to help the overloaded sysadmin ;-)

· I found that using a file layout like this:

  setup.py
  DateTime/

  does not work... how do I have to fix setup.py to work
  in this situation (setup.py being outside the package dir) ?

· Tracebacks are nice for debugging, but not so nice for
  the end user. I'd suggest to only print tracebacks when
  setup.py is run in -d mode and otherwise only output
  a single line explaining the error condition (and via
  some dictionary the possible solution to the problem).
  
· For many of my packages the user will have to edit a
  Setup file and change paths and/or compile time defines.
  How can this be done using setup.py ? I think I'd like
  this procedure to either be semi-automatic (a setdefaults.py
  module would scan the system and set the switches) or
  interactive with the user entering paths and answering
  to questions like:

  Do you want to setup the subpackage mx.ODBC.Sybase ? [y/n]

  which then control the install flow later on. I guess
  this can only be done by creating the setup.py:setup()
  call parameters on-the-fly...

Apart from that: Great work, Greg !

-- 
Marc-Andre Lemburg
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