[Distutils] sdist default archive format

[Leonardo Santagada]

On Jun 19, 2009, at 5:38 PM, Zooko Wilcox-O'Hearn wrote:

> On Jun 19, 2009, at 13:54 PM, Eric Smith wrote:
>
>>> It isn't so easy for setuptools to know which things ought to have  
>>> +x and which things ought not just based on their pathnames or  
>>> other metadata.
>>
>> Unless you specify explicitly it in a metadata file.
>
> My argument is that using a metadata-preserving archive format  
> allows a programmer to control that stuff and also allows setuptools  
> (or distutils, I guess) to ignore that stuff.  Inventing a way to  
> pass that information through the metadata requires the programmer  
> to learn and use an extra configuration on top of what they already  
> do, and requires setuptools (distutils) to pay attention to that  
> stuff.
>
>>> Having an archive format that preserves such bits would probably  
>>> be a good way to solve all such problems -- by making it the  
>>> packagers problems to set the bits before packaging rather than  
>>> setuptools's problem to figure out which bits ought to be set  
>>> after installation.
>>
>> How would you create such an archive on Windows? (A serious  
>> question, not trying to be argumentative.)
>
>
> You mean a bdist?  You can't "cross-compile" and build a bdist for  
> Linux on Windows (can you?), or vice versa.  I think we're only  
> talking about "non-cross-compiled" bdists here.
>
> A metadata-preserving archive format wouldn't make this harder, and  
> it might make it easier.


I think he mean how to do a sdist on windows that has +x on executable  
python scripts? I don't know the answer but it might be a good case  
for metadata external to the filesystem.


--
Leonardo Santagada
santagada at gmail.com