[Distutils] Where should 'scripts' go...

[Mark W. Alexander]

On Tue, 9 Apr 2002, David Ascher wrote:

> Currently, scripts go somewhere in the "Scripts" directory (e.g. on
> Windows, something like C:\Python22\Scripts, on Unix somewhere in the
> bin/ directory.
> 
> If people specify scripts that live in subdirectories in their source
> tree, using current distutils, those then get placed in subdirectories
> of the [bin|Scripts] directory.
> 
> To my mind, this is somewhat wrong, since I expect scripts (those things
> which have a #! line, an executable bit set, etc.) to all be placed into
> a single directory.  It means that I don't need to muck w/ my PATH if I
> install a package that has a script.
> 
> Is my mind right or is my mind wrong?  I'll help fix distutils if I'm
> right, and I'll fix ActivePython's current PPM behavior if I'm wrong. =)

Yes and no. User executed scripts should probably be on the default
path, but some scripts are only executed by other scripts and can go
anywhere as long as the primary scripts know where they are.

For example a script to execute a user interface might go in /usr/bin.
Support scripts invoked in response to user actions might be in
/usr/lib/appname.

Distutils should support whatever the package(r) needs. (I haven't
used the "scripts" capability, so I can't speak as to how it's done.)

mwa