[Pythonmac-SIG] Install manager engine available

[Jack Jansen]

Folks,
the install manager for Python we discussed last fall is available. At 
least: the engine is. At least:
there's enough of the engine that it managed to install Numeric and 
PIL, and actually notice it had
done so:-)

It is called the Package Install Manager for Python and it lives in 
Lib/plat-mac/pimp.py. If you wonder
about the name, think that "it may be shabby, but it gets you what you 
need" :-) There's docstrings
all over the place, and that is also the only documentation. The pimp 
module has a minimal commandline
interface, I'm going to work on a GUI next.

It only works for Python 2.3a1 on MacOSX 10.2 at the moment, but I 
would at least like it to work
for older Pythons and older MacOSX releases as well, so any help there 
is appreciated.

I would like it if people could test this with other packages (wxMac, 
PyOpenGL, PyObjC, etc), and if
they could test it with binary packages. For 2.3a2 I would like to have 
a sizable number of packages
in there (at least the 5 mentioned above, maybe more). During 
development I guess it's probably best
if I am the maintainer of the pimp database, but I would like to push 
that responsibility off as soon
as possible, so if anyone feels like doing this: please speak up!

If you try this with your favorite package and notice there is 
functionality missing: speak up! I would
like to keep functionality as minimal as possible, but no smaller. (As 
an example: I had to add the preInstall
functionality today because "python setup.py install" isn't enough for 
PIL. You need to run configure
and make too).
--
Jack Jansen, <Jack.Jansen@cwi.nl>, http://www.cwi.nl/~jack
If I can't dance I don't want to be part of your revolution -- Emma 
Goldman