[Distutils] eggs: Python version independence

[Phillip J. Eby]

At 01:47 PM 7/4/2005 -0400, Ryan Tomayko wrote:
>On Jul 4, 2005, at 12:45 PM, Phillip J. Eby wrote:
>>It does allow version specification at runtime; in fact there are
>>already
>>hooks that can be used to make require() automatically run
>>easy_install,
>>and these hooks are in fact already used to install packages' declared
>>dependencies.
>>
>>However, these hooks have to be explicitly activated; simply
>>building this
>>capability into Python's default behavior would be an extreme
>>security risk.
>
>What's the best way to turn that on? I haven't seen it referenced in
>the doc anywhere. I have a case where that would be useful.

Create an instance of AvailableDistributions or a subclass thereof, either 
overriding the 'obtain()' method, or passing in an 'installer' argument to 
resolve().  EasyInstall does this in its 'process_distribution()' method, 
for example.

This API is going to change in 0.6 though, when I refactor to match the new 
spec.  In the new spec, 'resolve()' will be an operation on a WorkingSet, 
which will be allowed to search various sources (e.g. collections of 
distributions) for possible resolutions.  This will make more sense, IMO, 
than asking a collection to resolve a requirement in terms of a working 
set.  Indeed, the awkwardness of that very mechanism was one of the things 
that made me realize the architecture needed refactoring.