[Python-Dev] Status of packaging in 3.3

[Dag Sverre Seljebotn]

On 06/22/2012 10:40 AM, Paul Moore wrote:
> On 22 June 2012 06:05, Nick Coghlan<ncoghlan at gmail.com>  wrote:
>> distutils really only plays at the SRPM level - there is no defined OS
>> neutral RPM equivalent. That's why I brought up the bdist_simple
>> discussion earlier in the thread - if we can agree on a standard
>> bdist_simple format, then we can more cleanly decouple the "build"
>> step from the "install" step.
>
> That was essentially the key insight I was trying to communicate in my
> "think about the end users" comment. Thanks, Nick!

The subtlety here is that there's no way to know before building the 
package what files should be installed. (For simple extensions, and 
perhaps documentation, you could get away with ad-hoc rules or special 
support for Sphinx and what-not, but there's no general solution that 
works in all cases.)

What Bento does is have one metadata file for the source-package, and 
another metadata file (manifest) for the built-package. The latter is 
normally generated by the build process (but follows a standard 
nevertheless). Then that manifest is used for installation (through 
several available methods).

Dag