[Distutils] repeatable and updatable virtualenv

[Saint Germain]

2010/3/22 Chris Withers <chris at simplistix.co.uk>:
> Saint Germain wrote:
>>
>> 2010/3/22 Chris Withers <chris at simplistix.co.uk>:
>>
>>>> I'm currently trying more or less the same thing by combining buildout
>>>> with virtualenv and pip.
>>>
>>> This doesn't seem like a sane thing to do.
>>>
>>> These tools attempt to address the same problems in different ways.
>>> Attempting to mash them together as it appears you have does nothing but
>>> result in an overcomplicated solution that's likely to be more fragile
>>> than
>>> if you'd worked with either buildout or pip/virtualenv on their own.
>>>
>>
>> Well I mainly wanted to set up environment using virtualenv+pip and it
>> worked pretty well.
>
> Then why not just use virtualenv+pip with a custom bootstrap script?!

Well because buildout makes all this very efficiently and simply. All
the options (find-links, newest, etc...) are already there.
Basically if I try to make a custom bootsrap script, I will end up
with more or less the same buildout.cfg, I will have to manage all the
options and the interaction, etc. For the error, I will have to have
my own error management.

Even for bootstrapping, I will have to download the same ez_setup in
order to easy_install what I want.

In addition, if I want to introduce some external C libraries, putting
this in my bootstrap will be some kind of hack. In buildout, I just
have to call the cmmi recipe, and voilà.

Really I don't see the point of trying to create from scratch my own
bootstrap script when buildout make all this so simple.

>> I thought that buildout was designed for just that, am I wrong ?
>
> It's a bit like using Subversion to manage a set of CVS checkouts...
>

I don't think that the comparison is fair.