[Pythonmac-SIG] Package Manager idea, adding a URL scheme

[Jack Jansen]

On Friday, October 3, 2003, at 09:57 AM, Just van Rossum wrote:

> Jack Jansen wrote:
>
>> And Just said:
>>> - I really dislike PackMan executing code from the .plist
>>
>> I can't think of any other way to make things truly extensible.
>
> I don't think PackMan needs to be extensible to such an extent. Am I
> right that the current Python snippets only do version checks? Receipts
> would work just as well, provided we limit version checking to packages
> installed through PackMan. I think that's a reasonable constraint.

No, receipts are specifically what I *don't* want. I want PackMan
to do actual tests of what is available.

The problem with receipts is that it causes a package manager to live
in a completely self-centered world: it knows about everything it 
installed
itself and nothing else. This means that if I'm an active developer on
package X I always have to go out of my way, because the package manager
doesn't know that I've built and installed it myself.

I've come across this problem with Fink, SGI-inst and various other
install managers. I want to build and install Python myself, and if 
someone
reports a problem with package Y that depends on Python I want to use
Fink to install Y, but let Y use my copy of Python (so I can test 
whether
the bug has disappeared with my fix, let's assume for the discussion).
This always turns out to be difficult without learning the internals
of the package manager in question.
--
Jack Jansen, <Jack.Jansen at cwi.nl>, http://www.cwi.nl/~jack
If I can't dance I don't want to be part of your revolution -- Emma 
Goldman