[Distutils] Revisiting the "pkginfo" patch

[Greg Ward]

Hi --

[cc'd to the distutils-sig, since this turns out to deserve a public
 airing rather than being the private email it started out as]

after *waaay* too long, I've finally gotten around to looking at the
"pkginfo" patch to the Distutils you posted back in January.  A few
comments:

  * I'm not convinced a separate PackageInfo class is needed -- the
    Distribution stuff is the home for package meta-data, and if it
    gets a bit more complex (eg. dependencies list), I think that's
    OK.  I definitely don't like having two classes (Distribution
    and PackageInfo) with largely the same info, though.

  * I'm leery of doing the fancy stuff, namely required packages
    and compatible versions.  While your data model might well be
    the Right Thing, it might not, and I don't think this stuff
    has been sufficiently discussed on the SIG.  And I'm also
    not sure that adding slots for the data without having code
    to back them up is right, either.  On the one hand, it's good
    to get people in the habit of listing requirements/dependencies,
    but I don't want to raise false expectations that the Distutils
    will actually *do* anything with that information.  (It will
    someday, but post-Distutils 1.0/Python 1.6.)

  * I find your type-checking machinery in pkginfo.py intriguing, but
    again I'm not sure if it's appropriate.  It's a neat approach to a
    common problem, but strikes me as over-engineered for this one
    module.  If I'm going to do really thorough type-checking on the
    attributes of one class, I'd rather do it everywhere.

Anyways, my inclination right now is to take the important stuff from
pkginfo.py -- writing the "package info" file -- and graft it into
install_info.py.  I suppose reading the "package info" file will also be
necessary to support an uninstall script.  (*Not* an uninstall command,
because you don't want to require having the source distribution around
in order to uninstall something!)

What say you?  [And what say other members of the SIG?]

        Greg
-- 
Greg Ward - geek                                        gward@ase.com
http://starship.python.net/~gward/
All of life is a blur of Republicans and meat!