[Distutils] [Python Language Summit] Distutils / Packaging survey

[Ian Bicking]

On Sat, Jan 31, 2009 at 2:40 AM, David Cournapeau <
david at ar.media.kyoto-u.ac.jp> wrote:

> Ian Bicking wrote:
> > On Fri, Jan 30, 2009 at 12:39 PM, Floris Bruynooghe
> > <floris.bruynooghe at gmail.com <mailto:floris.bruynooghe at gmail.com>>
> wrote:
> >
> >     I imagine things like libdir, prefix, datadir, docdir and other
> things
> >     copied from autoconf.  Where the defaults would be something like:
> >
> >     prefix = sys.prefix
> >     libdir = sys.prefix/lib/pythonX.Y/site-packages/pkgname
> >     datadir = sys.prefix/share/mypackage
> >     docdir = sys.prefix/share/doc/mypackage
> >
> >
> > I wouldn't want to use those.  What goes in libdir, what goes in
> > datadir?  I don't know, and frankly the distinctions start getting
> > really arbitrary.
>
> They are not arbitrary - they come from standard usage and have a
> rationale, at least on Unix (datadir for arch independent, and libdir
> for arch dependent, to simplify).
>

I'm just about ready to run screaming from this discussion... so no, I want
no part of determining what the "right" place for these files is, nor do I
find it self-evident.

But you mostly do not need to care, as a developer: .py files would be
> considered as data files, extensions as arch-dependent, etc... The main
> category which needs special care is documentation, and I think I am not
> the only one thinking that's one thing missing in distutils ATM.
>
> >
> > I would rather see something like pkg_resources existing API, where
> > there is some file that maps out how the local names of files (where
> > they'd be in a checkout) map to their installed location, then the
> > pkg_resources code could finds the real location of the file.
>
> I am not sure I understand how this would help OS packagers - this does
> not sound as the same problem at all.


Sorry, I didn't describe what I meant.

I imagine some file like package-data.conf, containing:

data mypackage/templates/
docs docs/_build/

At least in this example the first word is some tag, and the second is the
directory, or files, or maybe a wildcard or something determining what files
that tag applies to.  Everything not declared but present in a package (or
as a module) would default to "lib", and everything outside of that (like
the setup.py file) would be "ignore".

On installation, you'd write something like
mypackage.egg-info/file-locations.txt, that might look like:

mypackage/templates/ -> /usr/share/mypackage/templates/
docs/_build/ -> /usr/share/doc/mypackage

(I'm not sure what the syntax would look like, but whatever.)  Then when I
did something like pkg_resources.resource_string('mypackage',
'mypackage/templates') it'd look up this file to find the location (in the
absence of the file it'd act like it does currently)

-- 
Ian Bicking  |  http://blog.ianbicking.org
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