[Python-Dev] Python and the Linux Standard Base (LSB)

[Tony Nelson]

At 8:42 PM +0100 12/2/06, Martin v. Löwis wrote:
>Jan Claeys schrieb:
>> Like I said, it's possible to split Python without making things
>> complicated for newbies.
>
>You may have that said, but I don't believe its truth. For example,
>most distributions won't include Tkinter in the "standard" Python
>installation: Tkinter depends on _tkinter depends on Tk depends on
>X11 client libraries. Since distributors want to make X11 client
>libraries optional, they exclude Tkinter. So people wonder why
>they can't run Tkinter applications (search comp.lang.python for
>proof that people wonder about precisely that).
>
>I don't think the current packaging tools can solve this newbie
>problem. It might be solvable if installation of X11 libraries
>would imply installation of Tcl, Tk, and Tkinter: people running
>X (i.e. most desktop users) would see Tkinter installed, yet
>it would be possible to omit Tkinter.

Given the current packaging tools, could Python have stub modules for such
things that would just throw a useful exception giving the name of the
required package?  Perhaps if Python just had an example of such a stub
(and Tkinter comes to mind), packagers would customize it and make any
others they needed?
-- 
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