[Python-Dev] installing IDLE & other Tools

[Moshe Zadka]

On Tue, 14 Nov 2000, Guido van Rossum wrote:

> > How about
> > <prefix>/lib/python<version>/Tools/idle
> > instead.  I suggest the change to support an until-now-implicit policy
> > that anything in site-packages actually be a package.  If things in
> > site-packages aren't supposed to be packages, it ought to be called
> > something like site-tools <0.2 wink>.
> 
> Fine.

Sorry, just noticed a problem with that:

Say you put idle in .../Tools/idle
And compiler in .../Tools/compiler

Then the fact that some script does

sys.path.insert(0, ".../Tools") means that it would get all the tools
as packages to import, instead of only those it needs (say, for
idle-callers, idle). That means a lot of backwards compat. issues.
Why not have each tool be in things like ..../idle-support/idle/
And .../compiler/compiler-support/compiler, etc.?

Actually, once we do that, why bring the Python path into that at all?
"idle" is a program. The fact it is written in Python is incidental --
it might as well have been written in C, for all most users care. The
FHS policy would seem to indicate that the support files would need
to be in things like /usr/lib and /usr/local/lib
Say, the default installation would put it in /usr/local/lib/idle-support/
and would add a line to sys.path.insert(), and put "idle" (the script)
under autoconf control too.

sorry-for-challenging-the-consensus-again-ly y'rs, Z.
--
Moshe Zadka <moshez@math.huji.ac.il> -- 95855124
http://advogato.org/person/moshez