[Distutils] PEP 376 for Distutils

[P.J. Eby]

At 02:57 PM 2/24/2009 -0500, P.J. Eby wrote:
>At 04:45 PM 2/24/2009 +0100, Ronald Oussoren wrote:
>>What about another interoperability hook for system packages: specify
>>a file that a (system) package manager can include into the egg-info
>>directory (or egg-file) to tell setuptools/pip that this egg is
>>managed by the system and hence shouldn't be removed by setuptools/pip.
>>
>>Which such a file the user of python package tool could be warned if
>>he tries to uninstall an egg that's owned by the system, instead of
>>invoking the wrath of a sysadmin by removing such files.
>
>The absence of a RECORD file could suffice for that, I think.  Any 
>file that isn't positively listed in *exactly* one RECORD file 
>shouldn't be removed.
>
>I'm not super-set on that position, just noting that the absence of 
>a listing is sufficient to detect something that "shouldn't" (as 
>opposed to "mustn't") be deleted.  The only contradicting use case 
>is the deletion of packages that were installed via an older distutils version.

Hm.  This is also relevant for *install* operations... which should 
not overwrite (without warning) a file that's not listed in any 
RECORD files, even if it has the exact same content.  (As that would 
mean a later uninstall would silently delete it.)