[Distutils] PEP 376 for Distutils

[Andrew Straw]

Ronald Oussoren wrote:
> 
> On 24 Feb, 2009, at 16:20, P.J. Eby wrote:
>>
>>> Indeed. Having an index file would make things a whole lot simpler.
>>
>> For *whom*?  Certainly not for system packaging tools (rpm, deb, et al).
>>
>> A design goal should be to allow system packaging tools to install a
>> static file footprint: i.e., independent files with predefined
>> content, and no post-processing steps.  You can't do that with a
>> shared file, which is why setuptools uses a .pth hack to install
>> namespace packages when building packages for rpm et al.
> 
> What about another interoperability hook for system packages: specify a
> file that a (system) package manager can include into the egg-info
> directory (or egg-file) to tell setuptools/pip that this egg is managed
> by the system and hence shouldn't be removed by setuptools/pip.
> 
> Which such a file the user of python package tool could be warned if he
> tries to uninstall an egg that's owned by the system, instead of
> invoking the wrath of a sysadmin by removing such files.

But that is already implemented via file/dir permissions. By your
reasoning, we should also have something which warns users not to
install to the system directory. These ideas are a duplication of
functionality -- this functionality is implemented by the disabling
write permissions of non-sysadmins into system directories.

Or do you propose users put some stuff into their system directories not
managed by their package managers and other stuff managed by the package
managers?