PEP262 - database of installed packages

[David Ascher]

Thomas Heller wrote:

>             # According to David Ascher <da at ski.org>, utime() should be done
>             # before chmod() (at least under NT).

Wow.  Old email addresses etched in stone.  And claims of knowledge
which I have no memory of ever posessing.  Alzheimer's striking so
soon...

While we're on the topic of PEP262, I want to mention that we're
currently revisiting the PyPPM architecture.  For those of you who don't
know PyPPM is the Python version of PPM, which is the Programmers
Package Manager.  It was designed for Perl, but there's almost nothing
in PPM which is Perl specific.  PPM uses an XML file for the 'database
of locally installed packages', SOAP for the querying of the remote
database, and is based on a standard (OSD).

PPM has supported uninstallation, dependencies and versioning for a long
time, and is probably worth a look.  There are issues with the way the
PPM bdist target works which we're looking at replacing soon.  PPM3 (for
Perl only so far) is a major rewrite of PPM which added a bunch of cool
features.  For info on that, see: http://aspn.activestate.com/ASPN/PPM.

I'll try to poke my head in this discussion periodically and will read
up on the PEP, but feel free to ask if you have questions about PPM.

--david

PS: Thomas -- where's the source to the code that's embedded in
bdist_wininst?