[Distutils] [Python-Dev] PEP 365 (Adding the pkg_resources module)

[Phillip J. Eby]

At 12:33 PM 3/21/2008 +0000, Paul Moore wrote:
>On 21/03/2008, Terry Reedy <tjreedy at udel.edu> wrote:
> >  The standard (and to me, preferable)  way of dealing with such 
> things is to
> >  have an 'installation manager' that can reinstall as well as delete and
> >  that has a check box for various things to delete.  This is what Python
> >  needs.
>
>I'd dispute strongly that this is a "standard". It may be preferable,
>but I'm not sure where you see evidence of it being a standard.

I presume he means that there are a lot of entries in his Add/Remove 
Programs that work like that, and that it's an emerging standard for 
Windows.  (Certainly I've seen quite a few entries like that in mine, 
although more often than not they only have one checkbox!)


>Could I also point out that *if* such a standard is set up for Python,
>bdist_wininst and bdist_msi should be modified to follow it.
>Otherwise, it's not a standard, more of  competing approach.

The best thing to do would be to get a standard (ala PEP 262, but 
modified by the benefit of experience now) for tracking installed 
Python package distributions.  Then we can standardize on platform 
tools for managing this data, and include them in the relevant 
platform distributions.  (And that would include making bdist_wininst 
and bdist_msi follow this installation DB standard.)