Simple module installation

[Hans Nowak]

On 16 Apr 99, Ce'Nedra took her magical amulet and heard Paul Prescod say:

>I was just installing Fnorb and it was as painless an installation as a
>sane person could ask for but I got to thinking...couldn't this be less
>painless? The reason I ask is because I'm thinking of distributing code
>that depends on code that depends on code that depends on Fnorb and I need
>each installation part to be as simple as possible. So this isn't meant to
>pick on Fnorb in particular but to use it as a random sample package with
>binary and Python parts.
>
>The only thing that makes it extremely mildly painful is that it requires
>setting a few environment variables:
>
>FNORB_HOME  
>PYTHONPATH  
>PATH 
>
>The PYTHONPATH and PATH would be unneccessary if Fnorb used the Windows
>registry. Even so, I think that a Python-managed, portable, text
>file-based registry (like JPython's) would be better than depending upon
>the over-centralized Windows registry.

Yes, please don't use the Windows registry! Using it doesn't actually 
*reduce* the "pain". (I never quite understood what good it was, anyway, 
aside of a feeble attempt at making copy protection more fool proof.)

The Python-based registry as you describe it sounds neat. It sounds like it 
would be fairly easy to register and unregister programs and things, without 
messing up your whole system, unlike a certain other registry.

>If Python could find scripts in its PYTHONPATH then this wouldn't be
>necessary. So this is a feature request for that feature. I can implement
>it if people agree it would be a good idea:
>
>python -r script: run the script named "script.py" in the PYTHONPATH

This looks good too.

>If we put my idea for a Python-managed registry together with the "-r"
>idea then Fnorb could register itself on Windows or Unix like this:
>
>python -r register Fnorb /path/to/fnorb

Hmm... but how do you *un*register?

Nice ideas,

+  Hans Nowak  (Zephyr Falcon)
+  Homepage (under construction): http://www.cuci.nl/~hnowak/
+  You call me a masterless man. You are wrong. I am my own master.
+  May 60 trolls cut your chicken feathers out with your bad self!