[Distutils] [RFC] Recentering the static metadata need : PKG-INFO

[Floris Bruynooghe]

On Sat, Oct 17, 2009 at 06:00:51PM -0400, David Lyon wrote:
> On Sat, 17 Oct 2009 18:19:44 +0200, Tarek Ziadé <ziade.tarek at gmail.com>
> wrote:
> > e.g. like = 'KDEDIR' in os.environ (so meaning we introduce sequence
> > comparisons/operators
> > in those markers)
[...]
> For example, if there is a /etc/gdm/gdm.conf it is pretty safe
> to assume that gnome is installed on that system.
> 
> So in your PEP, your could have code..
> 
>  if sys.platform == 'linux2':
>      gnome_installed = os.path.exists('/etc/gdm/gdm.conf')
> 
> Then exposed that as a variable in your condition:
> 
> 'if desktop in "gnome|windows"' etc

All this seems like a bad idea to me.  Thinking from a GNU/Linux
distro point of view now you'd need to add a build-depends to e.g. GDM
*and* KDM only to get the correct .desktop file or something like
that.  And even worse, as proposed it would probably get confused when
both are installed.

There must be better ways of saying if you want to have (e.g.) a
.desktop file installed.

Also the choice you give to a Python package author is suddenly
massive: linux-gnome-kde-32-whatever.  Just how is a Python package
author supposed to get this right?

Regards
Floris

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