[meta-sig] The "distutils" SIG: name

[Fred L. Drake]

Paul Barrett writes:
 > I vote for 'distrib-sig' based on the previously outlined reasons.
 > Yes, the utilities will be developed first, but I see
 > social-engineering issues becoming and remaining important.

  I don't really care what the name is.
  I agree that the social engineering is part of the plan.  Between
early discussions with Greg and the session at IPC7, I'd expect a
two-phase plan of attack:

  1.  Design / implement / test the distutils package as described by
      Greg; the design can be refined as implementation progresses
      (we're still talking about Python, right? ;).  Get these into
      the 1.6 distribution, preferably by the first alpha.

  2.  Write documentation and educational material for the community.
      This should probably include updating any packages we can to use 
      the new structures and tools.  There are at least two important
      documents that need to be written:

        a.  Extension Installation HOWTO.  This is for users and
	    system administrators, and explains how to unpack and
	    install extensions that use this mechanism.  This should
	    include information about how to tailor the system to
	    support site-specific installation policies, if there's
	    anything to say about it.

	b.  Extension Buidlers HOWTO.  This describes how to write
	    the setup.py script so that installers can use the
	    instructions provided in the Extension Installation
	    HOWTO.  It may describe the appropriate directory layout
	    for the extension package to make the installation process
	    easy to specify, etc.


  -Fred

--
Fred L. Drake, Jr.	     <fdrake@acm.org>
Corporation for National Research Initiatives
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