[Distutils] Re: CPAN functionality for python

[Sean Reifschneider]

On Mon, Feb 26, 2001 at 11:49:32PM +0000, Will Ware wrote:
>Red Hat's RPM installer) handles this much better. Where the RPM system
>will inform you about dependencies but insist that the burden of resolving
>them falls to you (and heaven forbid that _those_ packages have unmet

My impression from most RedHat users is that they really aren't interested
in having their system pick up files unless they ask for them.  The "rpm"
tool can be given a URL to pick the files up from, so implementing something
that follows dependencies and picks them up isn't really a hard thing to
do...

It has been implemented in things like rpmfind and autorpm, but they just
don't seem to be that popular...

The question that makes this relavent to the discussion at hand is: is this
more or less true of Python modules than of your OS software?

Correct me if I'm wrong, but CPAN doesn't do this...  Or at least doesn't
seem to.  Just last night I was installing one package and the test
for it failed.  I tried installing other packages listed which the software
needed, and then went back to the "trouble child" and found it now worked
fine.

The thing is to give the users the option of doing it manually.  What about
if the download and build is happening because of an
"import module_i_dont_already_have"?

Sean
-- 
 Home is where your source is.  -- Sean Reifschneider, 1999
Sean Reifschneider, Inimitably Superfluous <jafo at tummy.com>
tummy.com - Linux Consulting since 1995. Qmail, KRUD, Firewalls, Python