[Distutils] formencode as .egg in Debian ??

"Martin v. Löwis" martin at v.loewis.de
Tue Nov 22 23:56:12 CET 2005


Phillip J. Eby wrote:
>> Debian should provide the packages, but not as eggs.
> 
> 
> For packages that only operate as eggs, and/or require their 
> dependencies as eggs, you are stating a contradiction in terms.  Eggs 
> are not merely a distribution format, any more than Java .jar files are.

So I should say

"Debian should not provide eggs, period", since what Debian provides
are packages, and eggs are not?

>> Debian developers should work with upstream authors to keep a
>> distutils-based setup.py operational.
> 
> 
> It's perfectly operational; clearly the entire egg system is *well* 
> within the Python runtime's intended operating parameters, as it uses 
> only well-defined and published aspects of the Python language, API, 
> stdlib, and build process.

I didn't say the egg system in inoperational. I said that distutils
setup is not operational for, for example, FormEncode: this uses
another packaging library in setup.py, not distutils setup.

> Perhaps you have some other definition of "operational" in mind? 

I had "*distutils-based* setup.py" in mind.

> As 
> I've already stated, applying this same policy to Java libraries would 
> be to demanding that all the .class files be extracted to the filesystem 
> and any manifest files be deleted, before Debian would consent to 
> package them.  In other words, it would be silly and pointless, because 
> the users would then ignore the packages in favor of actual jars, 
> because then their applications would actually work.

This is not the same. A java .jar file is deployed by putting it on 
disk. For an egg, an (apparently undocumented) number of additional
steps is necessary, such as editing easy-install.pth.

In Java, the drawback of course is that each user has to edit
CLASSPATH to include all the jar files desired. easy_setup
makes this unnecessary, but in a way unfriendly to dpkg (and
I assume other Linux package formats).

Regards,
Martin


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