[Python-Dev] PEP 376

[Ben Finney]

Paul Moore <p.f.moore at gmail.com> writes:

> 2009/7/1 R. David Murray <rdmurray at bitdance.com>:
> > The uninstall function is part of that infrastructure, but since
> > distutils isn't a package manager itself (it's an install program),
> > distutils as currently organized can't really handle uninstall
> > except as outlined in a section you may have clipped from the above
> > context (ie: when setup.py from the original package is available).
> 
> >From a Windows user's POV, "install program" = "package manager". And
> an install program needs an uninstall feature. I know Linux users with
> their advanced dependency-managing package managers feel that this is
> a stone-age view, and they may be right, but the PEP needs to take the
> Windows situation into account.

Actually, your view seems quite reasonable to me: as a GNU user with my
advanced dependency-managing package manager, I feel just as strongly
that a program that installs is implicitly promising that it can also
uninstall cleanly.

I think that calling distutils an “install program” is confusing. When
I discuss distutils, I don't call it a program at all; it's a library
(or perhaps “framework”) that provides part of the job of package
installation.

-- 
 \      “I think it would be a good idea.” —Mahatma Gandhi (when asked |
  `\                          what he thought of Western civilization) |
_o__)                                                                  |
Ben Finney