[Distutils] EasyInstall/Egg platforms

[Phillip J. Eby]

Currently, Python Eggs and EasyInstall use distutils.get_platform() to tag 
platform-specific eggs.  However, I've heard that this string isn't all 
that useful on some platforms.  (For example, I gather that it's pretty 
useless info on Mac OS X.)  Also, some things might in principle be 
compatible, even though they have a different platform string.  For 
example, a 'linux-i586' build should in principle be usable on a 
'linux-i686' machine, right?

Does anybody have more familiarity with the subtleties of binary 
compatibility, such that we could maybe devise a better platform string 
approach *before* the existing string is so widely used that it'll be 
difficult to change?