[Distutils] Extending distutils with 3rd party build commands?

[Bob Ippolito]

On Oct 22, 2004, at 22:14, Fred L. Drake, Jr. wrote:

> On Friday 22 October 2004 06:23 pm, Bob Ippolito wrote:
>> I need an editable file in a system-wide directory such as
>> site-packages that isn't "owned" by the Python installation.  Even if
>> this were the case, it would be a real pain to implement, because it
>> would have to be done as a very careful postflight script that merges
>> the user's current config file with the necessary additions (in this
>> case, make sure to preserve anything else in the command-packages list
>> if there is one).
>
> Something that's supposed to affect all users should require that root 
> set it
> up.  I understand the issue about it being owned by the Python 
> installation,
> though.

The problem is that Python itself will be owned by the vendor.  Let's 
say Apple, Debian, FreeBSD, etc.  Anything additional to that should 
live somewhere else, in a location that's explicitly not controlled by 
the vendor.  $prefix/etc creates another problem in that Python has 
never used $prefix/etc for anything before.  It's not a general 
solution to this problem.

In particular, the situation on OS X is such that site-packages is 
writable by the admin group (it's technically a symlink to somewhere 
else, but that's inconsequential), where the rest of the Python 
installation is owned by root:wheel (not writable by admins).  It's of 
course possible for administrator users to authenticate as euid 0 and 
modify vendor files, but it's frowned upon and should not be done, 
period.

> Where would you suggest it be?  $prefix/etc/distutils.cfg, perhaps?  
> What
> about on Windows?

There should be a way to register new distutils functionality by way of 
sys.path.  This allows the vendor, admins, users, and specific 
applications to add functionality.  The performance impact is 
completely negligible.

-bob