[Distutils] command hooks...

[Tarek Ziadé]

On 5/16/12 7:35 PM, Mark Sienkiewicz wrote:
>
>
>> Can you see packaging as a set of utility at this point, rather than 
>> a tool that's going to replace instantly all the legacy tools ?
>
> If it is not going to replace the legacy tools, then why should I use it?

Who are you ?

If you are a user that just installs software, you might want to use it 
because you can *uninstall* things. This is now less relevant now that 
pip has this feature, but easy_install does not. And with the PEP we 
wrote, any tool should be able to install/uninstall any project. And 
well, have this feature bundled into Python makes sense.

If you are a packager for a project, you can describe in details your 
data files, and add more metadata that are understood by PyPI.

If you are a debian packager, you will be able to define where the data 
files of a python project should be installed without having to patch 
some python code.

I have much more but it's a bit hard to summarize this in a mail - I 
have a packaging fatigue anyways.

>
> My understanding is that the legacy tools already work, for some vague 
> definition of "work".  Your task is to convince me that "packaging" is 
> better -- which I think will be hard to do if packaging is not better.
It really depends what you put behind the word "better". And no, My task 
is not to convince you that packaging is better.

My tasks were :

1 - try to define standards which every packaging tool can implement, 
for the sake of interoperability, have a consensus on them, have them 
"accepted"
2 - allow more "static" definitions of metadata
3 - add in the standard library
   a/ a reference implementation for all the standards
   b/ a minimal installer.

3-b is not ready for prime time obviously - but this should not take too 
long.


Cheers
Tarek



> Mark S.
>
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