[Distutils] PEP 345, PEP 376, PEP 386

[Tarek Ziadé]

On Sun, Jun 7, 2009 at 4:36 PM, Ronald Oussoren<ronaldoussoren at mac.com> wrote:
>> So maybe we could add a "INSTALLER" file with a unique md5 key
>> provided by the project that installed the package,
>> and ask for the key when calling this API ? If not provided, it would
>> use Distutils's md5 key
>
> Why should the the INSTALLER file contain a md5 value? I'd use either the
> name of the packager (dpkg,rpm,...), or even that plus the name of the
> external package:
>
>        rpm,py26-zlib
>
> This would make it possible for a PEP376-based uninstaller to give more
> meaningful error messages when you try to uninstall a project that was
> installed by a system package. That is, it could say "this project was
> installed using the 'py26-zlib' system-package, use 'rpm' to uninstall"
> rather than "go away I didn't install this".

Yes that's what I said later, and I changed the PEP accordingly,


>
> BTW. I'd say that the INSTALLER should default to "distutils", that is:
> don't install the INSTALLER file unless someone explicitly asks for it by
> specifying a different value for the installer. A tool like bdist_rpm could
> of course automaticly set that different value.

That's the case besides the fact that the INSTALLER file is created
even with the
default distutils value. I don't see any good reason not to create it
nevertheless.