[Python-Dev] PEP 376 - Open questions

[Tarek Ziadé]

On Thu, Jul 9, 2009 at 9:18 AM, Paul Moore<p.f.moore at gmail.com> wrote:
> 2009/7/9 Eric Smith <eric at trueblade.com>:
>> P.J. Eby wrote:
>>>>
>>>> ISTM that the problem that it solves is uninstall in the absence of
>>>> the original installer.
>>>
>>> Or uninstall where the installer is "setup.py install", actually.
>>
>> I think we need to move away from "setup.py install". It's the antithesis of
>> static metadata. setup.py needs to go away.
>>
>> If we have a static metadata file called, say "setup.info", then I'd like to
>> see:
>> "bdist_rpm setup.info" produce a .rpm
>> "bdist_msi setup.info" produce a .msi
>> "bdist_deb setup.info" produce a .deb
>> "bdist_egg setup.info" produce a .egg
>> and so on.
>>
>> There might be a library (and I call dibs on the name "distlib" :) that
>> provides support routines to parse setup.info, but there's no framework
>> involved. And no need for a plugin system.
>
> +1. Now who's going to design & write it?

Some work has been started on that at the summit too on that, under
the "static metadata" name.
(see the wiki)

Can we move that discussion to distutils-SIG and focus on PEP 376 in
this thread ?
I am scared to see the discussion going in too many directions,

Regards
Tarek