[Distutils] The "dist" command
Greg Ward
gward@cnri.reston.va.us
Mon, 27 Sep 1999 17:58:34 -0400
On 27 September 1999, Fred L. Drake, Jr. said:
>
> Greg Ward writes:
> > explictly, you're welcome to do so! If you want automated help in doing
> > so, may I suggest the 'find(1)' command? >smirk<
>
> I don't think there's any equivalent for Windows without buying 3rd
> party addons (not an acceptable alternative). It would be easy to
> implement using os.path.walk(); I'm sure an interested Windows-bound
> reader of this group could contribute such a beast.
Hey, I was smirking when I said that. The whole point of having some
wildcard support in the Distutils MANIFEST format is that people don't
need to use 'find', or a separate "make_manifest" script to generate it:
they just type a few lines and it works. You and Marc-André have come
up with some clever ideas that will allow people to type even fewer
lines in some circumstances, at the expense of more complexity in the
code.
> It's too early to say, probably: those of us dragging our feet need
> more experience with what you already have before we can say that it's
> absolutely required or you can say that it absolutely isn't.
Exactly -- I claim that the current MANIFEST syntax is excellent for
generating a source distribution of the Distutils. It would also work
quite well for the other software I've released in the past, whether
it's a C library, a MATLAB toolbox, or Perl module distributions. It's
certainly better than the MANIFEST format used by Perl's MakeMaker (all
files explicitly listed, with the ExtUtils::MakeManifest module to help
you generate it the first time -- good luck maintaining it). I hope it
fits the style of other developers, but we'll have to wait and see on
that.
Hyper-defensively yours,
Greg
--
Greg Ward - software developer gward@cnri.reston.va.us
Corporation for National Research Initiatives
1895 Preston White Drive voice: +1-703-620-8990
Reston, Virginia, USA 20191-5434 fax: +1-703-620-0913