[Pythonmac-SIG] PackageManager maintainer questions

[Andrew Straw]

I'm thinking of becoming the maintainer ('scapegoat' in Jack-speak) for 
a few Python packages.  In particular, thinking about maintaining the 
Mac OS X port of the pygame package brings up some questions.

How is a non-power-user supposed to do a site-wide install of anything? 
  (I used 'sudo pythonw PackageManager.py'.)

Is the XML database format stable(ish)?

I created my own test .xml database with only a single, pure-python 
package.  For some reason, it comes up as installed ('yes' in the first 
column) despite the fact there's no package of that name in the 
site-packages directory.  How is the installation status checked?  (It 
installs fine if I click 'overwrite'.)

I wonder what the best way to deal with c libraries is (e.g. in 
/usr/local/lib).  In reference to pygame, there are a few libraries 
used by both SDL_image (a dependency of pygame) and wxPython (another 
nice Python package).  The dynamic linker won't let you use 2 versions 
of the same library. In the past, I've resolved this by installing such 
libraries (IIRC libpng, for example) on the system by hand.  Then I 
would compile wxWindows and SDL_Image myself to use the system versions 
of this rather any pre-made version with pre-compiled libraries.  How 
do CPAN or other systems deal with this?  Jack, is this part of what 
you had in mind with the hidden packages?  I guess PackageManager may 
have to handle (or at least know about) libraries that aren't in Python.

Is a database of databases a useful idea?  I can't envision Jack 
maintaining *everything* (although he does a great job at coming pretty 
close!) and I might be willing to trust other database maintainers. 
Might it be good to have a list of HTTP-accessible .xml databases that 
could be accessed from within PackageManager?

Finally a note of thanks to Jack and all others involved: this stuff is 
great!  It seems MacPython is rapidly becoming the easiest of all 
Pythons to use!

Cheers!
Andrew