egg and modpython

[Paul Boddie]

Bruno Desthuilliers wrote:
>
> eggs are the Python's equivalent to Java's JAR, not a RPM-like. I said
> it was not an egg-specific issue (which is not totally accurate) because
> it mostly have to do with loading dynamic libs (.so, .dll etc) from
> zipped files.

True. It is notable that various Java application servers (to consider
the questioner's original problem) do unpack .war files, which probably
share more properties with .egg files than .jar files do. Indeed, I
don't recall a single occasion where I've ever needed to unpack .jar
files to have them successfully used by Java programs.

> > Debian packages even compile the bytecode
> > files to ensure that nothing tries (and fails) to write them to
> > privileged locations afterwards.
>
> So does eggs. But once again, eggs are *not* a general-purpose package
> management system like apt, RPM, emerge etc...

However, it seems to me that the setuptools and EasyInstall ecosystem,
whilst a remarkable achievement, has grown in scope sufficiently to
confuse such comparisons. Some .egg files are more than just being like
.jar files, as I note above, and with additional dependency information
included (as seems to be encouraged), one is suddenly required to deal
with a system that resembles a Python-centric package and dependency
management system rolled into one, operating in parallel with whatever
native package manager and whatever dependency management system
(they're typically separate things) that may be in operation.

Paul