[Distutils] Uninstall command, the return

[Lennart Regebro]

On Sat, Jan 31, 2009 at 23:21, zooko <zooko at zooko.com> wrote:
> Many other people, however, are unwilling to let the Python packaging tool
> nor the packages that it is installing write into their system directories.
>  For these people, the system directories are never allowed to be written
> into by any tool other than their operating system packaging tool e.g. apt.
>  For these people, offering a new feature so that, in addition to the Python
> packaging tool scribbling into their system directory at install time, it
> will *also* later scribble into it again attempting to undo the changes that
> it earlier did is only compounding the problem.  :-)
>
> For those people, there are several potential solutions.  One is the path
> from Python package through Python packaging tool (e.g. stdeb) to operating
> system package (e.g. .deb) to operating system tool (e.g. apt) to system
> directories.  Another is GNU stow.
>
> For me, and for some hackers that I've talked to, making setuptools
> compatible with GNU stow would satisfy their need to have a way to cleanly
> uninstall.
>
> So, please consider this a reminder in the distutils development process
> that you are undergoing that GNU stow compatibility has many benefits.

As far as I can figure out, that's just a matter of installing things
with a prefix, like /usr/local/stow/yoursoftware instead of /usr/local
and then using stow to symlink everything into /usr/local/bin and
/usr/local/lib, etc. I may have misunderstood, though, but if not it
should already be compatible...

-- 
Lennart Regebro: Zope and Plone consulting.
http://www.colliberty.com/
+33 661 58 14 64