[Distutils] Platform specific destinations in wheel files?

[Daniel Holth]

On Mon, Dec 23, 2013 at 4:22 PM, Paul Moore <p.f.moore at gmail.com> wrote:
> On 23 December 2013 20:53, Chris Barker <chris.barker at noaa.gov> wrote:
>> then you explicitly put in "bin", sbin", "share", whatever?
>>
>> This seems really klunky to me, and also forces platform dependence, and is
>> fundamentally tied to how posix does things....
>>
>> Maybe it's not possible, but I suggest that we could pre-define the
>> locations that might be needed:
>
> Agreed. My biggest concern with this whole idea is that developers
> (typically POSIX developers, but it applies equally to all) will
> *think* they need something like sbin because they are used to the
> concept from their environment, and so write their wheel to use it and
> hence be platform specific. However, with a little thought (possibly
> hardly any thought in the case of sbin :-)) they could have chosen a
> more generic approach which makes their project available to users of
> other platforms.
>
> This has been a very common issue historically, and I'm very reluctant
> to add anything that makes it easier to limit usability of packages
> across platforms. Portable by default should be the principle.
>
> But I see there is a need, and I understand that practicality beats
> purity. Let's just make sure that it's more effort to use the
> platform-specific approach than not to, so it doesn't become an
> attractive nuisance.

"Attractive nuisance" is the first phrase that comes to mind when I
think of the FHS.

> BTW, I like your idea of defining generic locations - but in the past
> efforts to do this have been doomed to death by bikeshedding and
> platform wars. So while I agree in principle, I fear it may not happen
> in practice :-(
>
> Paul

The GNU autoconf paths are the obvious choice. It would be really easy
to try adding these to the dict that wheel installers use to relocate
stuff. http://www.gnu.org/prep/standards/html_node/Directory-Variables.html