[Pythonmac-SIG] best way to install packages?

[Christopher Barker]

Andrew Jaffe wrote:
> Anyway, is there a 'best' way to install python packages on a
> mac nowadays? It seems that there at least three possibilities:
> 
>    - plain old setup.py install
>    - bdist_mpkg
>    - eggs (in which case I realize I'm not sure I know exactly *how* to 
> do this)

The "Best" way to install packages is to use whatever form you get. If 
you get an egg, use easy-install, if you get a mpkg, point and click it, 
if you the source, use setup.py.

I'm not just being glib here. I wonder if you, in fact, are asking a 
larger question, which it would be nice to discuss here:

What is the best way to distribute packages? Now you have to consider 
the three options above:

1) Just distribute the source with a setup.py
2) Use bdist_mpkg to build a mpkg
3) Build and egg.

The reason I make this distinction is that if you are getting just the 
source from a package maintainer, there is little reason to go though 
the trouble of making mpkgs or eggs, if you only want to install it on 
your own machine. slight modification to that:

The is no reason to make a mpkg.

You might want to make an egg, so that you can get the versioning 
control eggs give you (and some other features, but versioning control 
is the big one) However, if it's just for your purposes, and the package 
maintainer hasn't set up setup.py to build and egg, it's probably not 
worth it.

That being said, I would love it if EVERYONE that downloads and builds a 
source package on their Mac would contribute a binary package to the 
community. Mac users like binary packages!

I suggest the following for making a package that can be distributed:

- Make an egg.
- If you can't figure out how to make an ebb, use bdist_mpkg
- I think Bob is working on making py2app support eggs with bdist_mpkg, 
so that may get easy.

However, keep in mind that when you make a binary package, it will only 
work (reliably) with the version of Python that you build it with. I 
think the versions we should support are:

Bob's "official unofficial" 2.4.1 framework build for 10.3 (this will 
run on 10.4 also)

2.4.1 framework build for 10.4

There's something to be said for supporting Apple's pythons but I think 
that's lower priority.

And these packages should be put up on pythonmac.org

One other note:

The Framework builds put the "bin" directory inside the Framework. 
That's where scripts get installed by default. What that means is that 
in order to use them, the user needs to add that directory to their 
PATH. This isn't a big deal, but it reminds me too much of the old DOS 
days, where you needed to add something to your PATH for every darn 
piece of software you installed. I much prefer the *nix standard of 
having a few locations where executables get installed, and I's like to 
see the default scripts directory be /use/local/bin.

Should this be the standard? How could we accomplish that? Or should we 
just tell people to add the Framework bin directory to their PATH.

Mostly I feel strongly that, as a community, we need to establish 
standard ways of doing Python on OS-X, and publish them somewhere. I'm 
not picky about what those standards are, as long as they exist.

-Chris



-- 
Christopher Barker, Ph.D.
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