[Python-Dev] First draft of "sysconfig"

[Mark Hammond]

On 15/12/2009 3:09 PM, David Lyon wrote:
> On Tue, 15 Dec 2009 15:05:18 +1100, Mark Hammond
> <mhammond at skippinet.com.au>
> wrote:
>>> But under windows, an application developer might (as in probably
>>> would) like to install an application in \Program Files\someapp
>>> rather than hidden in the bowels of the python interpretor.
>>
>> I agree - but in that case you are talking about an application built
>> with Python - that is a different set of requirements.
>
> Building an application with python.. that's right. Of course. Why not?

I'm missing your point - many applications exist written in Python.

>> IOW, this isn't designed for applications which happen to be written in
>> Python.  There might be a case for such a module to be created, but this
>> PEP doesn't attempt to solve that particular problem.
>
> But programmers might want to write an application with python. It
> doesn't seem like such an edge-case thing to do.

They can, and they have.  So again your point is lost on me.

>>> They might like their data in "Application Data", which is where
>>> support people get trained to look for application data. Not down
>>> in \pythonX.Y\ ...
>>
>> Nothing is stopping them from doing that - but this PEP isn't intended
>> to provide that information.
>
> Distutils is stopping them.

I don't agree with that and I can present many applications as evidence. 
  You yourself mentioned mercurial and it looks for mercurial.ini in the 
user's appdata directory.

Regardless, this discussion isn't about distutils.

>> It does - many applications written in Python exist which do exactly
>> that.
>
> Yes. And they don't use any of the built in facilities, under windows.

To continue the mercurial example - mercurial will not use sysconfig to 
determine where to look for mercurial.ini on *any* operating system. 
sysconfig is not about solving that particular problem.

> So under windows, then, what is it trying to solve? Thats what I am
> asking.

The same thing it is trying to solve for non-Windows users - various 
threads here have articulated this well.  You needn't feel bad about not 
having such use-cases yourself - that simply means sysconfig isn't 
targetted at you - it isn't targetted at application developers on any 
operating system.

Cheers,

Mark