[Python-Dev] PEP 376 - Open questions

[Tarek Ziadé]

On Wed, Jul 8, 2009 at 5:11 PM, P.J. Eby<pje at telecommunity.com> wrote:
> At 01:13 PM 7/8/2009 +0100, Paul Moore wrote:
>>
>> An alternative solution would be for the bdist_xxx commands to ignore
>> the RECORD file generated in the temp area, and build its own on the
>> target machine when the installer is run. This is conceptuially far
>> cleaner, it's in line with the implicit assumptions in the PEP, and it
>> avoids a lot of the problems with path formats (the filenames in
>> RECORD could be absolute local pathnames, and that's the end of the
>> story). But - and it's a big but - this dumps RECORD file handling on
>> the bdist_xxx command, and they all need to implement the same code,
>> resulting in a lot of duplication and opportunity for inconsistency.
>
> The PREFIXES approach I suggested doesn't have these problems; the bdist
> installer only needs to write a PREFIXES file, and doesn't need to touch
> RECORD (which would be generated by the install --root).  In fact, since
> PREFIXES is strictly advisory, it can be generated by the install --root and
> left alone at installation time.  And, if it's generated without the --root
> prefix included, RPMs would have a correct PREFIXES file without further
> manipulation.  Plus, the bdist_wininst .exe installer can easily write a
> PREFIXES file, since it has to know the prefixes in order to do an
> installation in the first place.
>
> (We still need to hash out an initial list of prefixes, of course.)

Instead of building this list of prefixes from scratch, let's use the
ones that are *actually* used
when the install command is called, have a look at the list I've suggested :

http://mail.python.org/pipermail/python-dev/2009-July/090514.html

And let's drop other absolute paths,