[Distutils] What's missing from easy_install

[Neal Becker]

zooko wrote:

> 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).
> 

That's a good point.  For many uses, unix/linux systems have moved from 
trying to have various packages modify a file, to having a directory where 
each package installs a file.  Much easier to maintain.

/usr/lib/python-xxx/site-packages/easy_install.d

would be a good choice.