[Distutils] Appears bdist_rpm completely broken

[Greg Ward]

On 21 September 2000, Mike Olson said:
> There were a couple of spots were if we could abstract core distutils
> code into a function call (that we could override) it would make our
> lives that much nicer.  Ex, I needed on little hook into install_lib.run
> (after the build and before the copy), but I had to reproduce the entire
> function call...

OK, I've split install_lib.run() up.  It's now a three-liner:

    self.build()
    outfiles = self.install()
    self.bytecompile(outfiles)

and I have no problems with making people cut-n-paste three lines of
code in order to insert one.  ;-)  I *think* this approach is preferable 
to sticking in "pre_build()" and "post_install()" hooks, which are empty 
methods by default.

Try this out with the CVS version, but don't count on the interface
staying the same -- ie. that 'bytecompile()' method might disappear, if
byte-compilation moves to the build phase.  Whatever goes out in 0.9.3
should be final.

> another really useful thing for us on copy_file would be if the function
> told you if the file was copied....

Hmm, every time this comes up I can never remember why I didn't change
it the last time around.  Or maybe I did change it last time, and now
you want the old behaviour back.  Argh!  Good thing I have CVS here to
cover my you-know-what... ah!  here we go:

  revision 1.4
  date: 2000/06/23 01:42:40;  author: gward;  state: Exp;  lines: +6 -7
  Bastian Kleineidam: 'copy_file()' now returns the output filename, rather
  than a boolean indicating whether it did the copy.

This bloody return value has bounced back and forth between "was it
copied?" and "output filename", and I'm *not* changing it again!  It
makes my head hurt, which is not worth it over such a silly, trivial
little thing.  There is code out there that relies on getting the output
filename back, regardless of whether the file was copied or not.

        Greg