[Distutils] What is needed by an uninstall command to be useful ?

[David Cournapeau]

Ben Finney wrote:
>
> We seem to have a terminological confusion here (there are many of
> these in discussions about Python's packaging practices).
>
> How is the Python packaging system to distinguish between different
> "users" of the system? Is not the Debian packaging system a "user" of
> the Python distutils/setuptools?
>
>   

Not in this context, obviously; otherwise, I would mean that it is not 
advised to install anything, which does not make sense :)

The context was: how to determine which version to uninstall, assuming a 
given package were installed at several locations ? Someone mentioned 
the risk of not setting the installation directory right , which is not 
a concern for packagers. Some possible strategies are:
    - make the install directory mandatory when uninstalling ?
    - make the uninstall directory the one passed as prefix at the 
former install step, throw an error if it has not been installed yet 
(this is as good as we can get to mimic the autotools way, I think).
    - others

cheers,

David