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

[David Cournapeau]

Tarek Ziadé wrote:
> On Wed, Jan 28, 2009 at 11:45 AM, David Cournapeau
> <david at ar.media.kyoto-u.ac.jp> wrote:
>   
>> It is a solved problem: autoconf does it well, and has all the required
>> features,
>>     
>
> So does it mean that having Distutils generate some kind of
> "configure.in" template that could
> be used by autoconf could be the right approach ?
>   

I meant that instead of installing almost everything indistinctly like
we do now with distutils/setuptools, we should have something like:

python setup.py install --bindir=foodir --sbindir=bardir --mandir=mandir
....

E.g. just copying the categories from autoconf (the ones which make
sense for python packages). So making a FHS-compliant or something like
currently done is the responsibility of the packagers -  assuming the
directories are correctly set by the developer in the setup.py. The main
problem is how to retrieve the different files when it is needed in the
package - I would guess pkg_resources would need to be modified as well
for that purpose,

cheers,

David