[Distutils] Why are egg-info and related pth files required for rpm packages?

[Stanley A. Klein]

I recently installed Fedora 7 and looked at
/usr/lib/python2.5/site-packages.  The directory has numerous Python
packages installed but no egg-info and few .pth files.  Of the three .pth
files in my installation, only one has a content different from the name
of the package (pointing to a subdirectory of site-packages with a
different name).

Setuptools has the advantage of simplifying preparation of rpms because it
has find_packages().  However, it produces egg-info and .pth files as part
of the rpm's.

I can understand the need for these files when packaging into eggs for
installation in places other than python/site-packages or when packaging
for non-Linux operating systems.  But why are they needed when installing
as rpms on Linux systems into site-packages?

I think this issue applies to most Linux packaging, which is usually
either rpm or deb.


Stan Klein