[Distutils] What is the license of Distutils?

[Greg Ward]

On 23 March 2000, Bastian Kleineidam said:
> (1) I implemented an uninstall option. Currently this is a Python script
> with a list of installed files. I like more the idea of separating the
> uninstall script and just write the list of files in a file because with
> my previous attempt you can not delete the Python uninstall script itself
> since its running (well, under Linux this actually works - a script that
> deletes itself, but not under Windows).
> So I better store just a list of installed files.

Hmmm, that's a good point.  I was leaning towards Michael's "do 'em
both" suggestion, but that implies installing a trivial uninstall script
for every distribution: if the uninstall script is one of the files
installed for a distribution, then it can't do a full uninstall because
of this restriction.  A global uninstall script it is, then.  

> (2) There is a --destdir option to install in another directory. This is
> not the same as supplying the --prefix and --exec-prefix options.
> I need this to generate Debian packages easily with
> ./setup.py install --destdir=`pwd`/debian/tmp

Shouldn't be necessary any more -- please take a good look at the new
installation code and documentation.

> (3) Very crude script support. You supply a list of 'scripts' and
> 'programs' and they will be installed in effective_prefix/bin
> (effective_prefix is either sys.prefix or sys.exec_prefix)
> for Unix and in effective_prefix for Windows. You can customize this with
> --install-bin.

That'll have to change with the new installation stuff.

> Why is the install directory effective_prefix under Windows? On my Win98
> box this is the directory where python.exe is and I assume the user has
> the python executable in his/her PATH.
> If you supply a 'script', the string @INSTALL_BIN@ gets replaced with 
> the value of install_bin.

Irrelevant now -- again, try the new "install" command and see if it
works any better!

        Greg
-- 
Greg Ward -  geek                             gward@python.net
http://starship.python.net/~gward/
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