[Python-Dev] PEP 376 - Open questions

[Paul Moore]

2009/7/6 Nick Coghlan <ncoghlan at gmail.com>:
> I'd add one more question to the list: is allowing backslash separated
> names in the RECORD file actually a good idea, or would it be better to
> always use forward slashes?

They do always use forward slashes.

> For the other questions, I don't have anything much to add to PJE's
> comments, except that the "all relative" paths idea won't work due to
> the Windows drive letter issue (i.e. if an installer puts files in
> C:\Program Files, there is no guarantee that a relative path between
> site-packages and Program Files even exists if Python is installed on a
> different drive).

The big question, though, is can an installer actually *do* that in
practical terms?

- There are *no* guaranteed absolute locations on Windows, so any such
oddly-located file would require user interaction to work. Certainly
bdist_wininst and bdist_msi don't do that.
- My experiments indicate that bdist_{wininst,msi} are broken with
respect to absolute paths anyway: they do a --root install to a
temporary directory (and the absolute paths don't end up in there) and
then package up that temporary directory.

I still want to see a real life example that demonstrates that there
is a genuine issue here. We're spending a lot of energy and complexity
trying to design a solution to a problem that actually doesn't appear
to exist in practice...

(To be honest, I'd be fairly confident in saying that absolute paths
can be ignored on Windows, subject to some corner cases that I haven't
thought through yet. My worry is that I don't know what Unix and Mac
users might do, so I can't just wish away the issue because it can't
arise on Windows. Can a Unix/Mac user offer a real-world example on
their own system?)

Paul.