[Distutils] autoconf in distutils?

[lannert@uni-duesseldorf.de]

"M.-A. Lemburg" wrote:
> 
> On the practical side: does anyone know of ways to figure out
> those names ? E.g. how would one test for RedHat vs. SuSE,

Again, should one really? I mean, a package [author] is interested
in the _features_ of the current system, more than in its brand.

One example: init scripts are expected in /etc/rc.d/{rc?,init}.d/
by RedHat, /sbin/init.d/[rc?.d/] by SuSE. How would I inform the
install routines if I used RedHat with /sbin/init.d? This is
particularly an issue for Linux systems which actually are based
on the _same_ OS; but I could also configure most other Unices
beyond recognition.

Therefore all relevant parameters (which are not easily testable,
like presence/absence of header files in a known include path)
should be assigned individually. A predefined collection for, say,
SuSE or RedHat Linux would be nice, but should be overrideable
by the admin and the user.

  Detlef