[Distutils] pip vs easy_install vs distutils2

[Ian Bicking]

On Thu, Jun 3, 2010 at 8:38 AM, Barry Warsaw <barry at python.org> wrote:

> >So at the end, the end user would chose an installer that is
> >compatible with these archive, and know how to install them. In other
> >words, have ez_setup for example, run once for all at the Python
> >level, and be THE installer. Or run a pip_setup or whatever.
>
> How would OS vendors get into the game?  I could imagine that Ubuntu would
> want to make an opinionated choice for our users, and maybe even set things
> up
> so that packages are installed from our archives (as .deb packages) by
> default.  This would make things very easy for the majority of users,
> though
> of course we'd have to allow experts to customize it to grab from the
> Cheeseshop or use a different installer.
>

I could see how a deb might make sense for an unqualified installation,
i.e., one where no specific version or location is indicated. *Probably* a
specific version would be okay, but the way deb archives work it seems like
the archive would usually be unable to satisfy the request.  It would be
interesting if you could also hook into a deb generation script, and install
ad hoc packages as debs.

This really isn't a system choice, but a where-the-package-is-installed
choice.  If installing in /usr/lib/* then using the system package makes
sense.  If installing anywhere else it doesn't make sense (home directory,
virtualenv environment, something ad hoc using install options).  I wonder
if it would work best to control this through some distutils.cfg-like file
(distutils.cfg is terrible though), that would be looked up based on the
installation location.

-- 
Ian Bicking  |  http://blog.ianbicking.org
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