CPAN functionality for python

[Doug Hellmann]

In article <mailman.983237829.25485.python-list at python.org>, "Sean
Reifschneider" <jafo at tummy.com> wrote:

> On Mon, Feb 26, 2001 at 06:45:33AM -0500, Doug Hellmann wrote:
>>What if Python kept up with its own packages and modules like XEmacs
>>does?  We could then use the same format on all platforms -- it might
>>even be something we roll ourself to make sure we can unpack it with
>>*only* Python installed on a platform.
> 
> My understanding is that that's what distutils is meant to do, to an
> extent. The problem is that it's not entirely unreasonable to expect
> that an
> "rpm -qa" produce a list of all the software that's installed on your
> box.  If you don't use an RPM, you can't really make use of that, and
> packages WILL get dropped after a re-install.

But "rpm -qa" only works on a system where RPM is the default and primary
package installation system.  There are more OSes where that is not the
case than where it is.

It isn't clear to me why we would want to use more than one distribution
package format.  It appears that the argument is so that sysadmins can
use those tools to track what is installed on the system.  But isn't that
part of what this new thing is supposed to do?  It finds newer versions
of what you have, resolves dependencies, downloads and installs the
packages.

Doug