[Distutils] RFC : PEP 376 - egg.info

[David Lyon]

On Thu, 30 Apr 2009 09:34:26 +0200, Tarek Ziadé <ziade.tarek at gmail.com>
wrote:
> - install/uninstall script
> 
>   I think the best solution is not to provide an install script since
> third-party tool do it. Furthermore,
>   there's already the simplest install script available today: you can
> run "python setup.py install" on a given package
>   so it gets installed.
> 
>   So what about adding just a global uninstall feature, that
> uninstalls the files installed for a package, using the record
>   file, and let the third party tool have better features.

Today I just was writing a package-deinstallation routine and
doing small tests on the routine... :-) for my gui package
manager.

There are one or two issues here for you to think about...

 1) - distutils already exists on the installed system

    - how can you install over it?

 2) - The new distutils code won't be retrofitted to
      old systems. 

As far as I can see, it's just so much better to have a
package uninstaller in a seperate gui tool. That can be
installed over an existing installation.

> - MANIFEST (SOURCES.txt)
> 
>   Ronald pointed out that it was not necessary to have a MANIFEST file
> included if we are going to have a RECORD
>   file, as described in the PEP.
> 
>   The MANIFEST (which in a way is equivalent to SOURCES.txt pip or
> easy_install adds) is the list of source files,
>   whereas the RECORD is the list if installed files (which might
> include more elements in case of compilations)

I have done some limited testing on deinstalling packages over the
last week.

The big problem with using a manifest of installed files is that
the setup.py in distutils can generate more files than were originally
in the source package. Doing a build... for instance... leaves .o
or .obj files.

The way to solve the problem is to recursively delete the whole
package directory. That gets rid of everything. Intermediate files
and all...

> 
>   What would be the interest of having the list of source files in
> egg-info ?

Not neccessary - recursively delete the whole package directory or
.egg file.

David