[Python-Dev] PEP 376 - Open questions

[Sridhar Ratnakumar]

On Fri, 10 Jul 2009 01:56:36 -0700, Paul Moore <p.f.moore at gmail.com> wrote:

>> One thing that did occur to me based on this - do we want the format to
>> support designation of files (such as config files) that *shouldn't* be
>> uninstalled along with everything else? Or are we happy with not
>> mentioning the file in RECORD at all as the means of supporting that use
>> case?
> No. In my view, the uninstall feature is a relatively minor issue -
> people who want uninstall facilities generally use system packages (or
> complain that easy_install doesn't support uninstallation :-)). They
> aren't using setup.py install. (Of course, my experience is minimal in
> this regard, so maybe I'm wrong).
> Remember that the PEP says "Distutils will provide a **very basic**
> uninstall function" (my emphasis).
> Unless I'm misunderstanding, no-one is intending to use the new
> distutils uninstall feature in their own package manager
> (bdist_wininst, RPM, apt, ...)

Perhaps distutils can also provide an `uninstall` hook that application  
can use to do some pre-processing?

>> import distutils.installer
>> distutils.installer.register_uninstall_hoook(my_uninstall_hook)

I imagine that packages like pywin32 may have to register DLLs (install  
time) and unregister them (uninstall time).

Just a wild idea .. I understand that this may not be related to the  
current PEP. :-)

-srid