[Distutils] Pondering multi-package packages

[M.-A. Lemburg]

Harry Henry Gebel wrote:
> 
> On Thu, May 25, 2000 at 12:08:35PM +0200, M.-A. Lemburg wrote:
> > Umm, what's hairy about pre- and post-install code ? Pretty
> > much all RPM-like archives provide this feature in some way
> > or another.
> >
> > I'd suggest to have setup.py include a reference
> > to two functions somewhere (probably in the setup constructor):
> > one to run for pre-install and one for post-install.
> 
> You can do this now by defining your own install command in setup, I am
> providing my own build command in PyNcurses to perform some pre-build actions.

I'd rather like to see predefined hooks for this than
having to define my own install command.

BTW, how can I add some Q&A style setup dialog to build and
install commands ?

I will need this for mxODBC since there are plenty subpackages
which can all be installed separately and each of them will
need to know where to find the header files and libs to link
against.

mxDateTime has a different need, which I'm not really sure
how to handle: it needs some sort of "try to compile this
and return the exit code from the compiler" + "if this
compiles, run the result and return the exit code" to be able
to define symbols such as HAVE_TIMEGM (much like autoconf
does on Unix).

Is this possible with the current distutils ?

And a final question: do I have to redistribute distutils
together with the mx packages in order to make sure that
the build and install process works ? What about 1.5.2
compatibility ?

Thanks,
-- 
Marc-Andre Lemburg
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