[Distutils] Req: easy_install.py --site-dirs

[Vincenzo Di Massa]

Hello,
I'm new to this list so I will introduce myself...
I'm an italian Ph.D. student working on 
http://udu.wiki.ubuntu.com/PythonModulePackaging
http://udu.wiki.ubuntu.com/PackagesFromPyPi
as google's SummerOfCode project.

Basically ubuntu (a debian derivative distro) wants:
1. a tool to create packages of python modules "automatically" from PyPI (like 
EasyInstall does with eggs)
2. a setup where on python upgrade all compatible python modules are migrated 
to the new installation.

I'm quite new to distutils so I'd like comments / critics / suggestions...

I hope ubuntu will adopt my work for breezy: I will actually code what we all 
decide is the best solution (they pay me for this work).

Regards
Vincenzo

Alle 21:34, sabato 16 luglio 2005, Robert Kern ha scritto:
> I tried doing a bit of EasyInstall evangelism, and apparently, the
> Kool-Aid isn't quite sweet enough yet.  ;-)
>
> I got feedback from someone trying the very first example with SQLObject
> in the documentation. He is using Debian Linux and thus does not install
> anything that's not from a .deb into /usr/lib. User-installed Python
> packages need to go into /usr/local/lib/python2.x/site-packages. To
> encourage this, Debian's site.py is patched to add that to the list of
> .pth-enabled directories. I imagine that similarly conscientious/anal
> distributions do likewise.
>
> My friend is a bit more conservative than that, even. He manages
> /usr/local using GNU Stow so he can make installations as non-root. This
> is very important to him. He's even willing to use tricky .pth hacks[1]
> to permit this.
>
> Fortunately, all of his technical concerns can be addressed by adding
> --site-dirs.
>
> [1] As documented here:
> http://article.gmane.org/gmane.comp.python.distutils.devel/1895