[Distutils] distlib and data files => resources ?

[Tres Seaver]

-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-----
Hash: SHA1

On 11/20/2012 10:21 PM, PJ Eby wrote:
> On Tue, Nov 20, 2012 at 3:18 AM, Ronald Oussoren
> <ronaldoussoren at mac.com>wrote:
> 
>> 
>> On 19 Nov, 2012, at 20:26, PJ Eby <pje at telecommunity.com> wrote:
>>> 
>>> 
>>> Data files should never be installed to package directories.  But
>>> I'm
>> not aware of any good reason why resource files should ever be
>> installed anywhere *else*.
>> 
>> To be (too) snarky: because the FHS says so.
>> 
> Less snarky, Linux distributors try to keep simular files together
> (for
>> example storing all gettext translations together in
>> /usr/share/locale). To play nice in such an enviroment Python
>> packages would have to install resource files outside of the python
>> package and into the FHS specified directory structure.
> 
> 
> Consider the example of a web page template containing embedded
> Python code.  Is that a data file containing code, or a code file
> containing data?  Where does the FHS say it goes?
> 
> What if it's not embedded Python, but an embedded DSL interpreted by
> the package it goes with?
> 
> What if it's not a page template, but a precompiled SQL grammar?
> (Such as was distributed with the "gadfly" package, many a year ago.)
> 
> These are the kind of files I mean by "resources".  If somebody wants
> to support gettext or similar localization, then obviously they should
> declare the files data -- or better yet, as part of an explicit
> localization category.
> 
> The whole point of "resources" is that it's a catch-all for static
> data that's more convenient to treat as a standalone source file than
> to inline as a huge triple-quoted constant in a .py file.  ;-)

Exactly:  any dsitribution-packaer who tries to move such files out of
the package due to some misunderstood FHS-driven theory about such files
is just breaking the software to no purpose.

- -1 to enabling such misuse, as distinct from "data" / "config" files
which fall into other categories (documentation, example configs, etc.).
 Such files are not "resources" in any sensible use of the term.


Tres.
- -- 
===================================================================
Tres Seaver          +1 540-429-0999          tseaver at palladion.com
Palladion Software   "Excellence by Design"    http://palladion.com
-----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE-----
Version: GnuPG v1.4.11 (GNU/Linux)
Comment: Using GnuPG with Mozilla - http://www.enigmail.net/

iEYEARECAAYFAlCsTmsACgkQ+gerLs4ltQ4uBgCgnRRaQA0AjzaNOqPomSHOC7+s
19cAoMUl4FwpW6TDMAqSjG1Cj3bYx6bv
=w8D1
-----END PGP SIGNATURE-----