[Distutils] Re: CPAN functionality for python - requirements

[Sean Reifschneider]

On Tue, Feb 27, 2001 at 06:50:52AM -0500, Doug Hellmann wrote:
>> That seems to be where we diverge...  If somone has made an RPM of it, I'd
>> rather have that than some files winding up hanging around my file-system.
>
>So why did distutils make it into the Python core?

How does distutils making it into the Python distribution rule out that
somone may want to prefer RPMs?

>3. Need to support including documentation along with source for packages when
>documentation is available.

The practice in many RPMs is that the documentation is a "sub package" (see
my Python SRPM), which can be installed on your development machines, but
bypassed on the production machines...

Don't get me wrong, I'm all for documentation.  The lack of "javadoc" for
Python has really hurt though...

>But that leaves it up to the person posting the package to make distributions
>in formats for any platforms where folks might want to install their stuff, or
>to have someone *else* create those packages.  That may lead to a situation

What's wrong with allowing people to select different packaging formats
if they're available?

>where someone believes that they cannot install my package on MacOS because I
>didn't make an HQX file (or whatever) when I posted HappyDoc.

Again, my tool isn't concerned with such policies except that it allows the
user to define it.  If the user has defined a policy of "I won't accept
any package that's not in .hqx format", then they should indeed not be shown
HappyDoc if it doesn't have one.  However, it would also allow them to say
"I prefer .hqx files, but will take a distutils package if it's my only
choice".  That user then *WOULD* see HappyDoc if it had a distutils
package.

>I can go with "allow" but if we do not help then the user must specify in order
>to get useful results from the tool, and that becomes "force."

I don't follow that logic.

>So, it sounds like their tool just does the download and then they use the
>equivalent of distutils to do the installation.  Is that all we want?

For the archive server, I think it is...  That doesn't preclude the
archive client from being overly clever though...  That's what I'm going
to work on next, since I have the server in a state where it can handle
giving out such information.

Sean
-- 
 He who wonders discovers that this in itself is wonder.
                 -- M. C. Escher
Sean Reifschneider, Inimitably Superfluous <jafo@tummy.com>
tummy.com - Linux Consulting since 1995. Qmail, KRUD, Firewalls, Python