[Distutils] distlib updated - comments sought

[Antonio Cavallo]

On 5 Oct 2012, at 20:28, Stanley A. Klein wrote:
> I assume that by an "installer" you mean the combination of package
> building (done by e.g., rpmbuild) and installation (done by e.g., rpm or
> yum).

Hi,
I think you've hit the jackpot here…

Here few lesson learnt using rpm and python at fairly large scale (http://download.opensuse.org/repositories/home:/cavallo71:/opt-python-interpreters) project of mine I wish could be of some help in thinking of a "packaging system".
(I'm totally happy with the old-pain setup.py and I see no need to switch to anything else).


* Installation != Configuration *

running scripts at "install" time transforms the installer into a development process (I'm finger pointing the retarded dpkg debian way). Good rpm packages don't have *any* script at all. 


* Don't cross roles border *

Files don't get created into the void: the act of "installing" shouldn't be no more than transferring file to a filesystem plus adding metadata information in a database eventually (the rpm database, the windows registry etc.). 
Adjusting paths/files during the install (msiexec /i *.msi, rpm -i *.rpm etc.) is not the right way.


* I'm not expecting tar to download packages from internet, so rpm *

Having dependency resolution (and trying to install packages within a setup.py of any sort) is outright retarded although seems to fit somebody agenda. There're already plenty of tools in the os to do that e.g.. the dependency resolution between rpms is handled at yum level with a tiny help from the rpm. I don't want that placed in the wrong place.


BTW rpmbuild is a tool part of rpm, technically users (as sysadmin) shouldn't needed for managing packages.