[Pythonmac-SIG] .pydistutils.cfg (was: pychecker)

[Bob Ippolito]

On Jan 4, 2005, at 8:09 AM, Jack Jansen wrote:

> I'd never even heard of .pydistutils.cfg. I've added a note to the FAQ 
> pointing to it.

It has some more features in Python 2.4, you can use it to add new 
build command packages to distutils out-of-tree (like py2app, 
bdist_mpkg, etc.).  Of course, very few distutils extensions are 
implemented in away that is compatible with this new feature, but it's 
there and I'll probably end up making py2app and bdist_mpkg compatible.

> Then I looked at the distutils code, and noticed that there's also an 
> optional distutils.cfg inside the package. So that made me wonder: we 
> could install a symlink in 
> /System/yaddayaddayadda/lib/python2.3/distutils/distutils.cfg that 
> points to, say, /Library/Python/2.3/distutils.cfg, and put an 
> (admin-editable) file there that directs scripts tot the right place 
> system wide (/usr/local/bin by default, probably).

+1 on the idea
+1 for /usr/local/bin as the "right place"

Not so sure about install-data pointing to /usr/local/share (earlier on 
in the thread), because some packages might try and locate their data 
files using means other than distutils (sys.prefix relative).  I have 
never seen one of these packages, but god knows one has to exist.  In 
my experience, most packages seem to use install-data for documentation 
and maybe example code if anything.

-bob