[Distutils] EasyInstall: non-distutil packages

[Ian Bicking]

I'm starting to think that some sort of patch system is the best way to 
get non-distutil packages installed.  One of the reasons is that I just 
got it in my head that I'd like to install Javascript libraries using 
this stuff, and they certainly aren't going to have setup.py's.  I don't 
actually know how that's going to work... but I think there's something 
useful there.

But then, I'm not sure if patches are even that important.  Instead 
maybe it makes sense to create a package that doesn't include the data, 
but fetches it on installation.  You could just distribute a zip file 
with one member (setup.py) that used urllib or svn to fetch the 
installation.  But, well, the more appropriate way to do this would be 
to use easy_install's functions for downloading and unpacking.

But... does that mean that the setup.py has the location hardcoded of 
the non-distutil package it is installing?  That's a little annoying.

I dunno... I haven't thought this through, but this is what I'm thinking 
at the moment.  (I happen to be deploying some software today, and using 
easy_install a little, and thinking about how I can use it more)

-- 
Ian Bicking  /  ianb at colorstudy.com  /  http://blog.ianbicking.org