[Distutils] Newbie questions about setuptools

[Edward Ream]

> It appears to me as though you do not have a project that can be 
> meaningfully installed or distributed using the distutils or setuptools,

Doesn't this say more about distutils and setuptools than about Leo? I am in 
a state of shock.

> > To put it another way, disutils and setuptools are designed to install 
> > *immutable* collections of code and data.

The distinction between mutable and immutable data makes some (but not 
complete) sense on Linux. It is irrelevant on Windows.  True, one can't 
install mutable data in /usr, but many Leo users would be happy to have 
easy_install unpack and install Leo's zip file in the user's home directory, 
for instance.

Here is what I particularly like about setuptools:

setup.py sdist register upload
easy_install leo cleverly uses a generic upload_url
setuptools.set can (at least sometimes) find all files managed by cvs.

Why do any of the above require any particular organization of files?

We in the Leo community never argue over user preferences because my guiding 
design principle is this: if there are two or more even halfway reasonable 
ways of doing something, Leo provides an option that allows users to choose 
what works for them, and that's is the end of the discusssion.  It seems 
that allowing me to distribute Leo as I and Leo's users prefer would be a 
useful addition to setuptools.

Edward
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Edward K. Ream   email:  edreamleo at charter.net
Leo: http://webpages.charter.net/edreamleo/front.html
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