[Distutils] Installing large applications

[M.-A. Lemburg]

Tim Peters wrote:
> [Bob Ippolito]
> 
>>What about pth files?  I use them all the time for adding additional site
>>directories.  Try making a pth file with something like this in it and
>>dropping it into the system site-packages:
>>
>>import site, os; site.addsitedir(os.path.expanduser(os.path.join("~",
> 
>   "YourApplication", "site-packages")))
> 
> How does this help using more than one version of ZODB (the original
> example)?  The version you get depends on which account you're logged in
> with?  That could work -- for some definition of "work" <wink>.  A problem
> is that, at least on Windows, ZODB gets installed directly under the Python
> installation's site-packages now, and the native site-packages trumps
> (appears earlier in sys.path than) anything .pth files add.  We would have
> to install ZODB elsewhere all the time (not necessarily a bad idea!).

Tim, there's a problem with your example: you're expecting that
distutils fixes the problem of installing mulitple different
*versions* of a software - that's a hard problem and not one that's
easily fixed.

It is also a problem that lies in the application
space and not the distutils space because of the issues you
just mentioned: that of having to add a version number to the
installed software (or parts of it) so that Python can distinguish
between the versions, e.g. ZODB2, ZODBC3, etc.

I don't see how you can "fix" this problem without changing
the application. distutils is just a installation helper,
not a general toolkit for solving application design issues ;-)

-- 
Marc-Andre Lemburg
eGenix.com

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