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

[Jack Jansen]

On 4-jan-05, at 14:42, Bob Ippolito wrote:

> 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.

Interesting... Although: you only need py2app and bdist_mpkg on the 
supplier-side (right?), so it doesn't really buy us all that much 
except a bit of convenience.

>> 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).

Yeah, I was wondering about that one too. I'll leave it out, if the end 
user wants it s/he can edit the file.

> Another thing that would be nice is to have some admin-writable place 
> to put header files (in addition to Python's own headers) too.  But 
> that would require a patch to distutils and might need to happen in 
> the 2.5 tree.

[EVIL GRIN] What happens if we set both "include_dirs" and "headers" 
to, say, /Library/Python/2.3/python-includes in distutils.cfg? We'd 
need a bit of extra glue for PackMan binary installs (so it sends 
include files there too), but if this would cause include files to be 
installed there *and* that directory added to the -I flags we'd be all 
set, I think...
--
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