[Python-Dev] [Distutils] how to easily consume just the parts of eggs that are good for you

[Lloyd Kvam]

On Tue, 2008-04-08 at 10:01 -0700, zooko wrote:
> They both agreed that it made perfect sense.  I told one of them  
> about the alternate proposal to define a new database file to
> contain  
> a list of installed packages, and he sighed and rolled his eyes and  
> said "So they are planning to reinvent apt!".

When I wear my sysadmin hat, eggs become a nuisance.  They are not
listed in the system packages; if zipped they won't work when the apache
user tries to import them; easy_install can produce unexpected upgrades.
The system package manager (apt or yum) is much preferred.

As a developer, eggs are great.  If a python module is not already
available from my system packagers, easy_install will find it, get it,
and install it.  I waste almost no time with system administration
issues while developing.

Fortunately, distutils includes tools like bdist_rpm so that python
modules can be packaged for easy processing by the system package
manager.  So once I need to switch back to a sysadmin role, I can use
the system tools to install and track packages.

-- 
Lloyd Kvam
Venix Corp
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