[Python-Dev] "setuptools has divided the Python community"

[Tarek Ziadé]

On Thu, Mar 26, 2009 at 5:19 AM, David Cournapeau <cournape at gmail.com> wrote:
> On Thu, Mar 26, 2009 at 12:02 PM, Nick Coghlan <ncoghlan at gmail.com> wrote:
>
>> If that perception is accurate, then any changes likely need to focus on
>> the *opposite* end of the toolchain: the part between the "<common
>> packaging spec>" and the end users.
>
> Yes - but is this part the job of python ?
>
>> In other words: Given an egg, how easy is it for a packager/distributor
>> to create a platform specific package that places the files in the
>> correct locations for that particular platform (regardless of how
>> arbitrary those rules may appear to the original developers)?

I think Distutils (and therefore Setuptools) should provide some APIs
to play with special files (like resources) and to mark them as being special,
no matter where they end up in the target system.

So the code inside the package can use these files seamessly no matter
what the system is
and no matter where the files have been placed by the packager.

This has been discussed already but not clearly defined.

>
> Why coming from eggs and not from the build tool provided by python
> itself (distutils) ? I don't see what eggs brings - specially since
> the format is not even standardized.

I don't think the "egg as a format" part has anything to do with this
discussion. It's just a zip file with
a specific layout.

What's important is what we store in the .egg-info directory (or file) which
has two standards today (one in Distutils, one in Setuptools) but wich should
get a common standard soon (PEP 376)

Cheers
Tarek

-- 
Tarek Ziadé | Association AfPy | www.afpy.org
Blog FR | http://programmation-python.org
Blog EN | http://tarekziade.wordpress.com/