eggs considered harmful

[zooko at zooko.com]

Harry:

For some Free Software Python packages that I publish [1, 2, 3], I've
been trying to gain the benefits of eggs while also making the
resulting packages transparently useful to folks like you.

(You can follow along here: [4].)

One thing I've accomplished is figuring out how to install a Python
package whether it is distutils or setuptools while maintaining my
preferences for "use GNU stow" and "don't run setup code as root":
[5].

The next thing that I'm working on is bundling dependencies in source
tarball form with libraries, so that when you execute setup.py it
installs the dependency from the bundled tarball and does not attempt
to reach the Net.

So, please keep us informed about this issue.  There are many benefits
of setuptools, and there are great benefits of compatibility and
standardization, and I'm hoping that we can make setuptools be more
compatible with other paradigms instead of getting into a "everybody
please use it / no everybody please don't use it" tug-of-war.

Regards,

Zooko

[1] http://cheeseshop.python.org/pypi/zfec
[2] http://cheeseshop.python.org/pypi/pyutil
[3] http://allmydata.org/trac/tahoe
[4] http://allmydata.org/trac/tahoe/ticket/15
[5] http://zooko.com/log-2007.html#d2007-06-02-distutils_or_setuptools_with_GNU_stow