[Python-Dev] Re: packaging Tkinter separately from core Python

[Greg Ward]

On 13 September 2000, Guido van Rossum said:
> Hm.  Would it be easier to have Tkinter.py and friends be part of the
> core distribution, and place only _tkinter and Tcl/Tk in the Tkinter
> RPM?

That seems unnecessarily complex.

> If that's not good, I would recommend installing as a subdir of
> site-packages, with a .pth file pointing to that subdir, e.g.:

And that seems nice.  ;-)

Much easier to get the Distutils to install a .pth file than to do evil
trickery to make it install into, eg., the standard library: just use
the 'extra_path' option.  Eg. in the NumPy setup script
(distutils/examples/numpy_setup.py):

    extra_path = 'Numeric'

means put everything into a directory "Numeric" and create
"Numeric.pth".  If you want different names, you have to make
'extra_path' a tuple:

    extra_path = ('tkinter', 'tkinter-lib')

should get your example setup:

>   site-packages/
>               tkinter.pth		".../site-packages/tkinter-lib"
> 		tkinter-lib/
> 			    _tkinter.so
> 			    Tkinter.py
> 			    Tkconstants.py
> 			    ...etc...

But it's been a while since this stuff was tested.

BTW, is there any good reason to call that directory "tkinter-lib"
instead of "tkinter"?  Is that the preferred convention for directories-
full-of-modules that are not packages?

        Greg
-- 
Greg Ward                                      gward@python.net
http://starship.python.net/~gward/