[Distutils] how to easily consume just the parts of eggs that are good for you

[Dave Peterson]

Phillip J. Eby wrote:
> At 03:48 PM 4/10/2008 -0500, Dave Peterson wrote:
>> Stanley A. Klein wrote:
>>> On Wed, 2008-04-09 at 18:17 -0500, Dave Peterson wrote:
>>>> I think I can sum up any further points by simply asking: "Should it
>>>> be safe to assume I can distribute my application via eggs /
>>>> easy_install just because it is written in Python?"
>>>
>>> I think that based on this discussion the bottom line answer to this
>>> question is "No".
>>
>> I agree that it seems like that's where things are headed in the 
>> discussion.  But the discussion doesn't always coincide with the 
>> reality, right?   I guess I'm trolling more for a statement from the 
>> setuptools maintainer here.
>>
>> Particularly since I'm looking for an answer to my question about 
>> should Enthought continue to invest time into a setuptools patch that 
>> lets developers include docs, config files, etc. in eggs for 
>> installation in a FHS-approved location at install time?
>
> I think it's more than reasonable to define a standard for including 
> such data.  I'm somewhat more skeptical about doing that installation 
> automatically within easy_install.  Likewise, I'm skeptical about 
> doing other sorts of non-package, non-script installation.  I'd like 
> to see proposals that show due care to cross-platformness, 
> uninstallability, etc.
>
> In other words, when it comes to a "patch" -- the documentation is 
> going to count for a lot more than the code, and I'd rather see a 
> concrete proposal well in advance of the patch.
>
> Sooner would be better than later, too, because it's likely that the 
> plan for "non-egg installs" is going to be affected by the plan as well.

I believe I understand, and agree, with your concerns.   Let me be clear 
on the status of where we are in our work:  we've internally talked 
through a number of design possibilities, and are now trying out (via 
hacking on setuptools) how the one we thought was "best" worked out.  In 
particular, we're concerned about the difficulty of use in terms of even 
just the use-cases we have for ETS projects.   Also, since we do a bit 
of cross-platform deployment, we're also investigating those effects on 
the design as well.   That being said, I don't think we're ready to put 
forward a proposal that would withstand too much public scrutiny quite 
yet - at least if the resulting discussion implied a significant time or 
effort commitment on our part to carry the conversation forward.  If it 
sounded like we'd already figured it all out, I apologize for getting 
people's hopes up!   I just wanted to make sure further pursuit in this 
direction on our part wasn't completely wasted.

The above not withstanding, if anyone is interested in talking about it 
/ helping us, we certainly wouldn't ignore you.  I just can't promise 
immediate responses due to pretty pressing customer commitments on our part.


Regarding the mention of 'uninstallability' above, I assume it would be 
sufficient if the installed files were simply included in the generated 
list of files provided by the "--record" option since there is currently 
no uninstall command at all?  Or is there something else you'd like to 
see as an intermediate measure?   I'd love to add an uninstall option to 
easy_install as well (it's something we get hit about alot by our user 
community) but there's only so many hours in a day. ;-)


-- Dave