CPAN functionality for python

[Doug Hellmann]

On Mon, 26 Feb 2001, Bruce Sass wrote:
> On Mon, 26 Feb 2001, Sean Reifschneider wrote:
> <...>
> > My thoughts on that are that it's a job that's probably going to be
> > something subject largely to being handed off to appropriate scripts
> > based on the platform and some user input (for example, a user may
> > prefer to have packages they download installed in ~/lib/python1.5,
> > instead of /usr/lib/python1.5).
> >
> > Ideally though, the tool should be able to deal with allowing the user
> > to select their preferred distribution media.  I'd prefer to see an ix86
> > RedHat 7.0 RPM, a SRPM, and then would fall back to a distutils file or
> > tar file.
> 
> Do you mean:
> 
> A tool that would download a python pkg, then pass it onto scripts
> that could turn it into a .deb, .rpm (bunch of flavours), tarball,
> etc., then install it.
> 
> or
> 
> A tool that would download pre-packaged distro specific pkgs.
> 
> 
> Regarding the first... I like this because users will always get an
> installable package that fits into their system, and every system can
> have packages in their native format - something you can't expect if
> developers are doing the distro specific packaging and arbitrary
> individuals are filling in the rest.  I realize the distros will
> probably start auto-building once python modules are available in a
> standard format, but users should also have the ability to do the
> packaging with a minimum of hoops to jump through.

Why is this a desirable feature?  Is it worth the complexity?  

What if Python kept up with its own packages and modules like XEmacs does?  We
could then use the same format on all platforms -- it might even be something
we roll ourself to make sure we can unpack it with *only* Python installed on a
platform.

Doug