[Distutils] Platform specific destinations in wheel files?

[Nick Coghlan]

On 25 Dec 2013 04:14, "Chris Barker" <chris.barker at noaa.gov> wrote:
>
> On Mon, Dec 23, 2013 at 1:43 PM, Daniel Holth > 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.
>
>
> exactly.
>
>> 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.
>
>
> right, but setting the system up to allow a prefix and then hard-specify
paths under that makes it impossible to do it cross-platform!
>
>> > Portable by default should be the principle.
>
>
> +1 ... and at least possible (without writing multiple platform-specific
versions...)!
>
> ANother thought is:
>
> who should control where things are put?
>
> a) the package developer?
> b) the python system maintainer?
>
> I think clearly the answer is (b). i.e. we'll have reasonable defaults in
the python.org builds, but if Anaconda or Canopy, or a BSD or a linux
distro, or Raspberry Pi, or Micro..... could all define their own paths for
standard locations. I think this is much better than the package
maintainers fixing that.
>
>> The GNU autoconf paths are the obvious choice.
>
>
> Certainly a good palce to start.
>
> One issue -- that (and the FHS) is built around the idea of a "prefix",
where you can shift the whole pile to /usr or /usr/local, or /opt, or???
>
> But that concept doesn't work on all platforms, so we should be careful
about isolating it.

Encapsulating that assumption is why I think the "gnu" nesting is
justified. There are layout expectations inherent in the autoconf directory
design that just don't make sense on Windows, so any package expecting them
is going to be a bit quirky if installed on Windows.

Cheers,
Nick.

>
> -Chris
>
>
>>
>> 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
>
>
>
>
> --
>
> Christopher Barker, Ph.D.
> Oceanographer
>
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>
> Chris.Barker at noaa.gov
>
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