[Python-Dev] PEP 376 - Open questions

[Paul Moore]

2009/7/9 Eric Smith <eric at trueblade.com>:
> Yes. I'm just trying to point out that the information in the PEP is
> applicable only to the set of installers that want to work together in some
> integrated way. It doesn't apply to all installers, and I think that's the
> bigger problem.

Interoperability standards are only as useful as the number of
applications that conform to them. The set of installers that will
*not* provide PEP 376 compatible metadata is an important measure of
the usefulness of the PEP. Some metadata (the INSTALLER file and the
proposed PREFIXES file) must be created by the installer for the PEP
376 APIs to work.

Simple cases (relocatable packages with all package data maintained
inside the package directory) will work fine even without installer
co-operation, as long as the installer copies the whole structure
unchanged. But:

- some cases are not simple, and it's not clear to me how useful
"nearly always accurate" data will be
- I understand that some packagers deliberately pick apart Python
distributions to conform to OS filesystem layout standards

Paul.