[Distutils] buildout and distribution packaging

[David Lyon]

On Thu, 30 Apr 2009 09:16:15 +0200, Tarek Ziadé <ziade.tarek at gmail.com>
wrote:
> The fact that this application might have a package present elsewhere
> on your system, maybe another version, is unavoidable today and your
> packager might say that it's a security whole, and that it makes it
harder
> for him to upgrade your app in case a package must be updated.
> 
... 
> That said imho, one day, Python will evolve and provide multi-version
> support, and a feature for an application to pick the versions its needs.
> It's just too fuzzy and too controversial right now.

Hi Tarek,

I have actually been debugging a lot of the old packaging code within
python
and I feel like I am slowly coming to understand it.

>From what I understand of the code, multiple versions seem to be inherently
ok, it all just depends on the order of the python-path code.

So if a package is sitting right in the application directory, it will get
picked up first. And can be used. Provided the python-path points there...

Furthermore, it seems that the .PTH files are really the key to the whole
packaging system. They are all loaded in site.py (really old code) and they
tell the underlying interpretor where to look for any of the packages that
it needs.

I can see where you are trying to drive things... and it makes sense...

David