[Distutils] [Python-Dev] Capsule Summary of Some Packaging/Deployment Technology Concerns

[Matthias Klose]

Jeff Rush writes:
> I was in a Packaging BoF yesterday and, although not very relevant to the 
> packager bootstrap thread, Guido has asked me to post some of the concerns.

We did address many topics on both days, I added the following topics
which were addressed on the Friday BoF only, see
http://wiki.python.org/moin/PackagingBOF

- Linux distributions try to ship only one version of a
  package/egg/module in one release, only shipping more than one
  version if necessary. eggs (as least as shipped with Debian, Fedora,
  Ubuntu) are all built using --single-version-externally-managed.

   - import foo should work wether installed as an egg or installed
     with distutils, and without using pkg_resources.require
   - pkg_resources should handle the situation of one egg version
     installed as --single-version-externally-managed (default version) and
     one or more eggs installed not using
     --single-version-externally-managed. Currently these additional
     versions cannot be imported. 

- It would be useful if setuptools could handle separate build and
  install steps like most configure/make/make install systems do. Access
  to external resources should optionally be disabled during a build.

- The idea was brought up to use a to-be-defined api-version to
  describe dependencies between eggs. Version numbers are generally used
  for more than api changes; the idea follows existing practice for
  shared object names, only changing when the API is changed.