[Python-ideas] Changing the default install location, script versioning (Packages and PEP 370)

[Jesse Noller]

On Mon, Jul 20, 2009 at 4:29 PM, Nick Coghlan<ncoghlan at gmail.com> wrote:
> Antoine Pitrou wrote:
>> Jesse Noller <jnoller at ...> writes:
>>> I think the "best" fix for this is to make the bin/ directory mirror
>>> the lib layout - each version would get it's own bin directory:
>>>
>>> .local/
>>>     bin/
>>>         python2.6/
>>>         python3.1/
>>
>> -1. The point of .local/bin is that it's (supposedly) standard, so that you have
>> only one path to add to $PATH. Putting scripts in versioned subdirectories
>> totally defeats its purpose.
>
> Also -1 because the -m switch was added to address exactly this problem
> of interpreter version specific copies of scripts without needing a
> proliferation of script files in the system bin directories.
>
> That said, does distutils have the equivalent of Python's "make
> altinstall" command to tell the distribution to install versioned
> scripts (e.g. easy-install-2.6) without altering non-versioned symlinks
> (e.g. easy-install)?
>
> Cheers,
> Nick.

So python -m "setuptools.commands.easy_install" <args> or python
`which easy_install` is a-ok for people? I find it much easier to tell
someone "run easy_install" or "run pylint" rather than either one of
the previous examples.

I mean, if I have two versions of python (say I'm developing for 2.6
and 3.1) and I want my tool chain (pip, virtualenv, pylint, fabric,
and so on) to be installed into both, I have two choices:

1: as soon as I install into --user remove the unversioned binary name
(for example, pylint) and stick to pylint-2.6. This breaks down if the
upstream package doesn't add the versioned name of the script, which
mean I need to move it after install.

2. Skip scripts entirely, and execute the module by hand.

python -m may have been added to stop the proliferation of script
files - but from a pure usability standpoint, as someone who writes
libraries which contain executables standpoint, running "myfoo" is
much simpler to explain to noobs and easier to remember overall.

jesse