[Python-Dev] Generally boared by installation (Re: Setting project home path the best way)

[Christian Tismer]

On 20.11.12 12:39, Nick Coghlan wrote:
> On Tue, Nov 20, 2012 at 7:06 PM, Kristján Valur Jónsson 
> <kristjan at ccpgames.com <mailto:kristjan at ccpgames.com>> wrote:
>
>     I’m intrigued.  I thought this was merely so that one could do
>
>     python –m mypackage.mysubpackage
>
>     Can you refer me to the rationale and discussion about this feature?
>
>
> It was part of a fairly long progression in changes to the command 
> line execution support :)
>
> Top level package execution with -m came first in 2.4, arbitrary 
> package execution for -m arrived in 2.5 (along with the runpy module), 
> directory and zipfile execution (by supplying a valid sys.path entry 
> as the "script" command line argument) was added in 2.6/3.0, and 
> finally officially supported package execution via -m only arrived in 
> 2.7 and 3.1 (a broken version of the last accidentally existed in 2.5, 
> but that was just a mistake that arose when merging the import 
> emulations in runpy and pkgutil, and had a side effect that violated 
> at least one of the import system invariants).
>
> In the specific case of directory and zipfile execution, discussion 
> happened on the tracker: http://bugs.python.org/issue1739468
>
> It was never brought up on python-dev because Guido was participating 
> directly in the tracker discussion. Unfortunately, we then also forgot 
> to mention it in the original version of the 2.6 What's New doc, so 
> the vast majority of people missed the addition :(

Hi Nick,

thank you very much for this story and the link to the issue tracker!
A very good move for Python which is really not mentioned enough
to make people more aware of a great feature.

I think part of this discussion should get a more prominent place
for gems that can be found without knowing what to search. ;-)

Is the issue tracker permanent enough to reference it?
Maybe there could be some auxiliary info page with proper keywords
that collects links to relevant discussions like this.
Do we have such a thing already?

ciao - chris

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