[Distutils] Re: CPAN functionality for python

[Bruce Sass]

On Mon, 26 Feb 2001, Guido van Rossum wrote:

> > There are enough different packaging schemes around that it seems
> > unnecessarily heavy-handed to pick one (or two or three) over the
> > others - Python should not appear to favor any paticular system.  The
> > only way I can see to do that is to not package to anyones spec, but
> > provide enough information so that anyone can package to their
> > fav spec.
>
> But practicality beats purity: if a large fraction of users,
> especially newbie users, are using a specific platform, it makes a lot
> of sense to provide pre-packaged distributions for them!  E.g. Windows
> installers, Red Hat RPMs.  (So far my experience with Windows
> installers is much more positive than with RPMs though -- RPMs forever
> seem to depend on some version of some other RPM that you don't have.)

Sure, but if you can build packages on the fly, transparently to the
user... it is a "six of one, half dozen of the other" situation.  I
would expect there to be situation where autobuilding would fail or
not be practical (C based modules), supporting "binary" packages would
be a necessity.

Ya, RPMs are not known for doing a good job of dependencies.  Debian
would be a better model to look at with respect to what dependency
info is required and how it should be handled.  I rarely (can't
remember the last time) have dependency problems with DEBs, that
includes third party DEBs (they usually have problems with "Policy",
but that's a whole other story ;).


- Bruce