[Distutils] PEP 376 comments

[Ronald Oussoren]

On 8 Jun, 2009, at 2:58, Tarek Ziadé wrote:

> 2009/6/7 Ronald Oussoren <ronaldoussoren at mac.com>:
>
>>
>> * The global functions seem to maintain and modify global state,  
>> wouldn't this cause problems if I specify different values of the  
>> path arguments in different pieces of code?
>
> The cache just prevents re-reading a directory content.  Do you have a
> scenario in mind of a possible problem ?
> The only problem I can see is when a project is uninstalled by a
> program while these APIs are used by another program.

I guess the problem only occurs if "egg_infos" is part of the public  
interface. What if module A calls get_egg_infos(), then module B calls  
get_egg_infos(somePath), then module A uses "egg_infos" assuming that  
it still refers to the same set of paths.

There's also the issue of API complexity. The global functions don't  
add a lot to using an EggInfoDirectories object when you are working  
with a different set of paths than sys.path.

Ronald