[Python-Dev] splitting out bdist_* (was: interminable 'setuptools' thread)

[Thomas Heller]

glyph at divmod.com schrieb:
> On 07:59 pm, fdrake at acm.org wrote:
>>I'm actually in favor of removing the bdist_* from the standard 
>>library, and allowing 3rd-party tools to implement whatever they need 
>>for the distros.  But I don't think what you're presenting there 
>>supports it.
> 
> I do think that it's relevant that the respective operating system 
> packagers don't find bdist_rpm, bdist_deb, et. al. useful.  It's not 
> very useful to have a bdist_deb that nobody actually builds debs with. 
> This has been a problem for me, personally, since debian has made 
> various ad-hoc change to Twisted or Twisted-based packages to break our 
> plugin system, since the distutils metadata has been insufficient for 
> their purposes.  If the deb-generating stuff were in a separate project 
> with a faster release cycle that were easier to contribute packages to, 
> perhaps debian packagers could be convinced to contribute their build- 
> hacks there (and bdist_deb could invoke debhelper, or vice-versa).
> 
> It would be great if someone could volunteer to maintain this stuff 
> independently, put it in a Launchpad project or something.  IMHO it 
> would be better for the community at large if this were spun as 
> "increasing the release speed" of the bdist_* family, rather than 
> "removing", which seems to me like it would generate another teacup- 
> tempest on the blogowebs.  Of course I'm not volunteering, but I will be 
> best friends forever with whoever does this PR/maintenance :).
> 
> Given that py2exe and py2app (which includes "bdist_mpkg") are both 
> based on distutils, it seems like we're on the way to independent 
> maintenance anyway.  Perhaps bdist_wininst/_msi could be donated to the 
> py2exe project if they would be willing to maintain it, and the new 
> project for _deb and _rpm could be called "py2packman" or something.

Well, py2exe is Windows only.  And I know that people used bdist_wininst
to create windows installers on Linux.

-- 
Thanks,
Thomas