Current install methodolgy eggs?

[John Nagle]

On 9/12/2010 3:40 PM, Ben Finney wrote:
> Paul Watson<paul.hermeneutic at gmail.com>  writes:
>
>> What is the currently favored installation process for Python
>> applications?
>
> ‘python ./setup.py install’, using the standard library's Distutils
> library.
>
> Other third-party libraries build on top of that and are generally
> backward-compatible.
>
>> The last time I looked, it was eggs.  Is that still true?
>
> I don't think eggs were ever the favoured distribution method. They are
> one *option* provided by Setuptools, but even then a so-called “sdist”
> (source distribution) is the favoured distribution format, installed
> using the above command.
>
>> Any good links to source of information. I would like to instill the
>> habit of using a decent install process for even the smallest of
>> utilities.
>
> This is a dream shared by many, but Distutils has much improvement to be
> done yet. Recently — the past couple of years — a lot of progress has
> been made on this front, and Python 3.x is getting many of the benefits;
> look up the “Distutils2” efforts for more.

     There's some discussion of a common installer on the Python
development group, but that's probably the wrong approach.  A more
effective approach would be something that takes a standard "setup.py"
file and wraps it in a Windows installer file, an RPM file, or whatever
the platform uses as standard.

     The "eggs" system never worked very well.  It made too many
assumptions about where various things were, and when it guessed
wrong, you were stuck.

				John Nagle