[Distutils] Working environment

[Phillip J. Eby]

At 09:56 AM 3/12/2006 -0500, Jim Fulton wrote:
>OK, we disagree. People encode this sort of information in scripts
>now,  Saying it is something else doesn't make it so.  If no one else
>is interested in this, we'll try to figure something out and share what
>we've learned.

FWIW, I'm probably going to generalize script writing to be entry-point 
based.  Right now, the various entry point groups for scripts are 
hard-coded, but I want to make it extensible.  That way, you'll be able to 
effectively have custom install-time hooks, within certain restrictions 
that I haven't yet figured out.  (Apart from obvious restrictions like not 
being interactive, not writing stuff to arbitrary locations, etc.)

The complex thing about doing this is that when an egg's scripts are 
written, its dependencies may not yet be installed.  (Especially in the 
system package manager case.)  So, I may have to refactor the whole 
installation process to queue scripts for installation only at the end of 
installing all dependencies.

Not-so-coincidentally, a similar refactoring may be needed to implement 
path freezing for scripts.  :)   (Because until the dependencies are 
installed, you don't know what paths to freeze.)