[Distutils] how to easily consume just the parts of eggs that are good for you

[Phillip J. Eby]

At 03:48 PM 4/10/2008 -0500, Dave Peterson wrote:
>Stanley A. Klein wrote:
>>On Wed, 2008-04-09 at 18:17 -0500, Dave Peterson wrote:
>>>I think I can sum up any further points by simply asking: "Should it
>>>be safe to assume I can distribute my application via eggs /
>>>easy_install just because it is written in Python?"
>>
>>I think that based on this discussion the bottom line answer to this
>>question is "No".
>
>I agree that it seems like that's where things are headed in the 
>discussion.  But the discussion doesn't always coincide with the 
>reality, right?   I guess I'm trolling more for a statement from the 
>setuptools maintainer here.
>
>Particularly since I'm looking for an answer to my question about 
>should Enthought continue to invest time into a setuptools patch 
>that lets developers include docs, config files, etc. in eggs for 
>installation in a FHS-approved location at install time?

I think it's more than reasonable to define a standard for including 
such data.  I'm somewhat more skeptical about doing that installation 
automatically within easy_install.  Likewise, I'm skeptical about 
doing other sorts of non-package, non-script installation.  I'd like 
to see proposals that show due care to cross-platformness, 
uninstallability, etc.

In other words, when it comes to a "patch" -- the documentation is 
going to count for a lot more than the code, and I'd rather see a 
concrete proposal well in advance of the patch.

Sooner would be better than later, too, because it's likely that the 
plan for "non-egg installs" is going to be affected by the plan as well.