[Distutils] What's missing from easy_install

[zooko]

On Apr 14, 2009, at 6:56 AM, Neal Becker wrote:

> The issue I need to address is to cooperate with other packaging  
> systems.  I'm using Fedora, which is rpm/yum based.  A new python  
> module is announced, I'd like to easy_install it.  The official  
> fedora package may be delayed by weeks.  So I easy_install.  But  
> when the fedora update comes, they may conflict.  For example,  
> scons from fedora will place things in /usr/lib/scons, not the same  
> as easy_install.  easy_install will modify easy-install.pth.   
> Nothing will clean it.  So, there is a real need for easy_uninstall.

GNU stow is great for this kind of thing.  If the New Distutils only  
writes new files and directories on installation (i.e. it does not  
need to *change* an existing file, the way the current easy_install  
has to change the contents of easy_install.pth), then it will be  
compatible with GNU stow, which will give me the best uninstall I  
could want.  (For one thing, because I can use the same tool -- GNU  
stow -- to install and uninstall any software package, regardless of  
what programming language it is written in).

Another option would be if you have a sufficiently automatic  
"bdist_rpm" feature with which you can easily produce .rpm files for  
your Python packages ("distributions").

Regards,

Zooko