[Distutils] "Python Package Management Sucks"

[Phillip J. Eby]

At 07:40 PM 10/2/2008 +0900, David Cournapeau wrote:
>Phillip J. Eby wrote:
> >
> > I think install tools should handle it and keep it out of developers'
> > hair.  We should of course distinguish configuration and other
> > writable data from static data, not to mention documentation.  Any
> > other file-related info is going to have to be optional, if that.  I
> > don't really think it's a good idea to ask developers to fill in
> > information they don't understand.  A developer who works entirely on
> > Windows, for example, is not going to have a clue what to specify for
> > FHS stuff, and they absolutely shouldn't have to if all they're doing
> > is including some static data.
>
>I may be missing something, but why should the developer even care about
>FHS ? We should not standardize what goes where, but the kind of data
>needed to be installed (doc, etc...), and then have different
>(pluggable) implementations to put those where they should.

Yep - that's precisely what I've proposed.  We just need to define 
those categories in such a way as to minimize the burden on a Python developer.

Where data files are concerned, however, a developer should only need 
to distinguish between read-only, read-write, and samples, because 
any finer-grained distinction that relies on platform-specific 
concepts (like locale directories) is probably going to be error-prone.