[Distutils] formencode as .egg in Debian ??

[Phillip J. Eby]

At 06:03 PM 11/24/2005 +0100, Josselin Mouette wrote:
>Le jeudi 24 novembre 2005 à 11:46 -0500, Phillip J. Eby a écrit :
> > And finally, and most importantly, you're ignoring the fact that this
> > discussion began because a Debian developer wanted to package a successful
> > egg-using project and its dependencies.  Nobody came to you asking for 
> your
> > blessing to package eggs or your approval of how useful eggs are; somebody
> > came and asked me for help in getting this to work with Debian.  Help 
> which
> > I've been giving.
>
> > For some reason, however, you seem to think that you are actually in a
> > position to pass judgment on the usefulness of eggs.  If their usefulness
> > were in any meaningful question, we wouldn't be having this 
> conversation in
> > the first place!
>
>You have to bear with it. In the open source world, anyone can come and
>discuss the usefulness of your project. This won't happen if your
>project isn't causing trouble to other projects, but when you're talking
>about breaking the python packaging practises in Debian, I think any
>Debian developer has the moral right to discuss your suggestions.

My point is that I am not the one who just dropped by and asked somebody to 
change their practices.  I was off doing other things and was pulled into 
this discussion by someone asking for assistance.  Every proposal I've made 
in this thread has been directed at providing that assistance.  Your 
dislike of or disagreement with any particular proposal doesn't excuse your 
attitude.

I don't really care if you accept the proposals or not; you guys need to do 
whatever you think is best for Debian.  I've only tried to educate you 
about your options regarding eggs, framed within the assumption that you 
*want* to distribute egg-based projects.  The question of eggs' goodness or 
lack thereof is entirely irrelevant within that frame.  Either you want to 
distribute those projects or you don't.  If you don't, then this discussion 
is pointless.  If you do, then arguing that people shouldn't use eggs is 
equally pointless.  The only discussion that has any point is *how* we can 
get the needs of both Debian and the project developers met.


>Why the hell would a package having nothing to do with yours would have
>to add a file - especially an empty file - to cope with it?

Geez, you make this sound like I just wandered in off the street and 
started telling people to redesign their packaging system.  Somebody asked 
for help in Debianizing TurboGears.  If you want to Debianize TurboGears, 
you'll have to add such a file to at least ElementTree's Debian 
package.  The proposal I made is my attempt at offering a solution that 
doesn't require you to completely repackage ElementTree, while still 
allowing it to be used by TurboGears.

Bluntly put, it's Debian that's asking me to change my practices (and those 
of egg-based project authors) to suit their needs, not the other way 
around.  You seem to be under some delusion that we need you or want you to 
support those projects, when it's actually the existence of eggs that 
allows us to not care whether *you* exist.  We wouldn't be having this 
discussion if somebody from your group hadn't asked for *our* help, so that 
Debian can play in *our* sandbox.  All this discussion about the relative 
elegance of different packaging mechanisms is irrelevant.