[Distutils] Installing scripts to multiple directories

[M.-A. Lemburg]

Harald Meland wrote:
> [Michael Hudson]
>>Harald Meland <Harald.Meland@usit.uio.no> writes:
>>>Hi,
>>>
>>>I'm trying to figure out how I can make distutils support installation
>>>of scripts to more than one directory, e.g. both <prefix>/bin/ and
>>><prefix>/sbin/.
 >
> Hmmm... I think I might be able to pull off something that will work
> with the code as it stands today.  However, it will probably be rather
> fragile with respect to any changes done to any of the involved
> distutils commands (as my current plan is to have my extensions
> subclass these).

Subclassing is probably the right thing to do here. The easiest
way to do this is by writing you own command and then let that
command replace the standard install_scripts command.

> However, I'm wondering if the functionality I'm after ought to be part
> of vanilla distutils.  If there's interest in making it an official
> part of distutils, it would maybe be better to actually rewrite the
> involved parts of distutils instead of trying to subclass them (in
> fragile ways).

You'd most probably break lots of existing code out there
which already does this.

IMHO, the right path to choose would be to factor out some parts
which then provide better and cleaner ways to hook into via
subclassing. Some methods in distutils are rather convoluted (e.g.
various .run() methods and adding something to the middle of these
methods usually turns out to be a copy & insert procedure which is
not ideal (and usually breaks every now and then if you upgrade
distutils).

-- 
Marc-Andre Lemburg
eGenix.com

Professional Python Software directly from the Source  (#1, Mar 14 2003)
 >>> Python/Zope Products & Consulting ...         http://www.egenix.com/
 >>> mxODBC, mxDateTime, mxTextTools ...        http://python.egenix.com/
________________________________________________________________________
Python UK 2003, Oxford:                                     18 days left
EuroPython 2003, Charleroi, Belgium:                       102 days left