[Distutils] Installing scripts

[Fred L. Drake, Jr.]

On Thursday 10 June 2004 02:41 pm, Mark W. Alexander wrote:
 > I can't speak to cross-platform issues, but isn't this a behavior that
 > should be handled transparently by the appropriate bdist_* and, maybe,
 > the install, commands?  bdist_[unices] can strip the extension and

I'm not sure, but I could see the build_scripts command dealing with it, at 
least to some degree.  The absence or presence of the extension could be 
handled at this stage.  It may be a minor improvement, but seems like 
something that should be made easier for the setup.py author.

 > install in the appropriate system directory while bdist_[windowses]
 > could setup an application directory in "Program Files".

I think application directories are a completely separate issue, actually.  
I'll try and write something this afternoon to discuss issues related to 
that.

Start menu entries are another area where it would be nice to have better 
support, but I'm not enough of a Windows user to be aware of what all the 
issues might be.

 > The setup.py script should be oblivious of such details, and package
 > authors shouldn't have to concern themselves about what platforms their
 > packages might be used on (outside the obvious - packages that use win32
 > specifics, etc.).

Ideally, yes.  I think distutils could safely deal with the extensions issue 
without having any impact on setup.py.  The possibility of having scripts 
that are specific to Windows or Unix (or whatever) in a package that is 
cross-platform is a larger issue and harder to solve.  I'd love to have 
better packaging tools to help me out, though.


  -Fred

-- 
Fred L. Drake, Jr.  <fdrake at acm.org>
PythonLabs at Zope Corporation