[Distutils] tracking requested vs dependency installs in PEP 376 metadata

[Lennart Regebro]

As usual, these debates are based on a ot of assumptions that seem
obvious to one part but not the other. I assumed that when you
mentioned uninstalling the framework, you meant to go through the
procedure of actually uninstalling all parts of it. Instead you seem
to have meant the case that any command that uninstalled the framework
also by necessity HAD to result in the uninstalling of all
dependencies, which is obviously not a good idea.


Also, here are some more things I hold for obvious, to bar further
misunderstandings:

1. Obviously any uninstaller would explicitly say which packages will
be uninstalled.
2. Equally obvious, it should provide an option or maybe even ask, if
you want the dependencies uninstalled or not.


Plone, as an example, currently consists of some 170 packages. I think
the most suprising result for a newbie here is that if you say
"easy_uninstall Plone" and only one of these actually gets
uninstalled. I agree the best option is asking. But barring that it's
pretty obvious that the default should be either to uninstall all, or
warn that there now are 169 orphaned packages and tell you how to
uninstall them.

-- 
Lennart Regebro: Python, Zope, Plone, Grok
http://regebro.wordpress.com/
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