[Python-Dev] Integrate BeautifulSoup into stdlib?

[M.-A. Lemburg]

On 2009-03-24 23:47, Martin v. Löwis wrote:
>> An installer for a pure-python package that made no attempt
>> to bundle dependencies might be nice, but I don't quite see how that
>> falls outside the scope of distutils/setuptools/etc.  In other words, I
>> don't see why the installer can't bootstrap the 'normal' dependency
>> management which would be used if the package was installed any other
>> way or on other platforms.
> 
> Perhaps that could be a solution. However, in package management
> systems that solve this properly, you also have proper uninstallation,
> which includes:
> - uninstallation is rejected if packages still depend on the
>   to-be-removed package (or else offers to remove the relying packages
>   as well)
> - uninstallation reference-counts, causing an automatically-installed
>   package to be uninstalled if it is no longer needed, or else offers
>   to compute-then-uninstall all packages which are no longer needed.
> The .exe/.msi installers do support uninstallation, but, alas, no
> dependency management.

Question is: who really needs such dependency management ?

* It may be helpful to developers who wrap up 3rd party code for
an application (e.g. Miro).

* It may also help users that want to install a few plugins for an
already installed application (e.g. Zope).

* It will help users who use OSes that rely on software management
tools to keep the initial distribution size small and prefer
sharing over application isolation (e.g. Ubuntu).

* It won't simplify things if such a system gets in the way of
how the users or developer usually works or wants to work in
a project.

* It introduces dependencies on network resources that may
potentially not be trusted.

* If the package dependencies are not managed with lots of quality
assurance, it can easily ruin your complete installation or
simply prevent you from installing two sets of packages at
the same time.

There are both lots of reasons for wanting dependency checking
and against such dependency checking.

As a result, there is no definite answer as to whether it's
good or bad and there is no single system that would satisfy
all users/developers.

Instead, there needs to be freedom of choice and
distutils provides this freedom of choice by allowing you
to ship .exes, .msi installers, binary drop-in ZIP archives,
RPM packages, Debian packages, etc. etc.

-- 
Marc-Andre Lemburg
eGenix.com

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