[Distutils] Install a script to <prefix>/sbin instead of <prefix>/bin

[Nick Coghlan]

On 3 December 2013 21:42, Paul Moore <p.f.moore at gmail.com> wrote:
> On 3 December 2013 11:27, Thomas Heller <theller at ctypes.org> wrote:
>> More and more I get the impression that distributing (writing the setup
>> script and deciding on package formats) Python libraries is currently
>> nearly impossible for the mortal user.
>>
>> distutils, setuptools, wheels... sigh.
>
> I feel your pain. There is work ongoing to write a "packaging user
> guide" which documents best practice and sticks to providing a "one
> way to do things" approach. But it's very much a work in progress at
> this point, and things are changing rapidly right now, so it's some
> way away from being useful yet (don't look at the section on packaging
> your project unless you are fond of reading sections that say "FIXME"
> - or you want to help write those sections :-))
>
> Even as someone directly involved in pip/wheel development, I struggle
> every time I need to write a setup.py. All I can say is that we're
> trying to cut through the confusion as fast as we can...

Aye, we're suffering from the fact that:

- the distutils docs haven't been substantially updated in years
(remember folks, you need to make sure to build your CPython
extensions with Visual C++ 7.1!)
- the setuptools docs are improving, but still have large elements of
assuming you already know how to use distutils
- the distribute and distutils2 docs assumed a future that never eventuated

We've also been focusing our efforts on getting the installer side of
things sorted out moreso than the build side, and PEP 453 is really
the culmination of that effort (mostly implemented now, as there's
just a few more issues for pip 1.5 final, along with the docs update
to go on the CPython side. See http://bugs.python.org/issue19347 for
details, since I can't apply the PEP453 tag on the pip side of
things).

Metadata 2.0 is then about clearly defining the full data model we
want to support for distribution, and I think that will help us better
document the build side of things.

Getting the packaging user guide up to an at least somewhat usable
state is highly desirable though, since that's what I plan to
reference from the Python 3.4 docs. Even if it's incomplete, it would
be difficult for it to be more misleading than the current distutils
docs that are shipping with CPython :)

Cheers,
Nick.

-- 
Nick Coghlan   |   ncoghlan at gmail.com   |   Brisbane, Australia