[Distutils] PEP 345, PEP 376, PEP 386

[Brian Sutherland]

2009/6/4 Tarek Ziadé <ziade.tarek at gmail.com>:
> Oups messed up sorry -> resending my answer
>
> On Thu, Jun 4, 2009 at 11:52 AM, Brian Sutherland
> <brian at vanguardistas.net> wrote:
>>>   - http://svn.python.org/projects/peps/trunk/pep-0386.txt
>>
>>    ...  < V('1.0.dev456')
>>    ...  < V('1.0')
>>    ...  < V('1.0.dev456post623')
>>
>> Looks like a typo or very un-intuitive. It doesn't seem right that a
>> "dev" version sorts after a full release.
>
> This is a dev version of a post-release version. Which is an edge case
> submitted by Phillip.
>
> How would you write it ?

    ...  < V('1.0.dev456')
    ...  < V('1.0.dev456post123')  # post-release of a dev version
    ...  < V('1.0')
    ...  < V('1.0.post456dev623')  # dev version of a post-release
    ...  < V('1.0.post456')            # post release

i.e. that a postfix of "dev" means "before" and a postfix of "post" means after.

>>
>>>
>>> - PEP 376 | status : waiting for Phillip complementary feedback (and
>>> anyone else of course)
>>
>>
>> I can imagine distutils uninstalling files previously installed by dpkg
>> as a shortcut to breaking a machine. Though I'm not sure what will
>> actually happen in practice.
>
> Distutils defines a standard for an EGG-INFO structure, and provides a
> API for the uninstallation that is more likely to be a reference implementation.
>
> Although, It is already providing an install feature.
>
> If uninstalling a package with Distutils, while it was installed by dpkg breaks,
>
> I can imagine that in the very same system, you can also break it
> if you *install* packages with Distutils, easy_install, pip because
> you shortcut dpkg
> as well.

Yep. Though I think that nowdays dpkg installs to a different directory than
Distutils' default. So users have to specify extra options to break
their systems.

> I think this is the responsability of such a system to make sure it handles
> all installation and uninstallation.

How should such a system stop distutils (acting as root) from doing an
uninstallation?