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

[Greg Ewing]

John J Lee wrote:

> It allows you to think about "uninstallation" as "delete the app == 
> delete the file"

But 0install doesn't do that, as far as I can tell -- it
still keeps the data in some mysterious form and location
known only to itself, and requires you to use special tools
to install/remove apps.

 > with ROX, it seems very similar to how I imagine Mac OS
> applications look

Yes, ROX is very MacOSX-like, but I don't think it has
anything to do with 0install.

> But it also (plausibly) claims to allow sharing of the data that 
> comprises an application and its dependencies between users who don't 
> trust each other

If ROX apps included a checksum, and the system verified it
before running the app, that would give you the same thing
trust-wise, I think.

Dependency management is the part I agree is lacking in a
MacOSX-like approach. Some tool for helping with that would
be good to have. But I don't think it's necessary to make
the components whose dependencies are being managed into
anything complicated or mysterious in order to get that.
They should just be files or directories that I can put
into place myself, and look at to find out what I have.

-- 
Greg