[Python-Dev] Re: Patch level versions and new features (Was: Some dull gc stats)

[Barry A. Warsaw]

>>>>> "MAL" == M  <mal@lemburg.com> writes:

    MAL> Hmm, maybe I wasn't clear enough: I think that a distutils
    MAL> package should have a flag in its setup.py which lets
    MAL> distutils tell whether it's a site package or a system
    MAL> package, e.g.

    | setup(... pkgtype='site-package' ...)
    | vs.
    | setup(... pkgtype='system-package' ...)

    MAL> (with pkgtype='site-package' as default value if not given)

    MAL> The user would in both cases type 'python setup.py install'
    MAL> but the install command would automatically choose the
    MAL> right target subdir (site-packages/ or system-packages/).

Except you can't always tell if its a system package or an add-on.
email for example is an add-on for Python 2.1, but a system package
for Python 2.2.

Ignoring this specific example for now (since none of this will exist
until Py2.3 anyway), it seems to me that there will be future packages
for which this is true too.  In that case, hardwiring site vs. system
in the package's setup.py isn't the right approach.

-Barry