[Python-ideas] Changing the default install location, script versioning (Packages and PEP 370)

[Jesse Noller]

On Mon, Jul 20, 2009 at 5:38 PM, Paul Moore<p.f.moore at gmail.com> wrote:
> 2009/7/20 Jesse Noller <jnoller at gmail.com>:
>> So python -m "setuptools.commands.easy_install" <args> or python
>> `which easy_install` is a-ok for people? I find it much easier to tell
>> someone "run easy_install" or "run pylint" rather than either one of
>> the previous examples.
>
> No, but "python -m easy_install" is fine. The fact that setuptools
> doesn't provide a form designed for use with python -m doesn't mean
> that there's a problem with the feature, just that setuptools wasn't
> designed with it in mind.
>
> Paul.
>

I don't know if easy_install does or doesn't - I simply used it as an
example. What I don't parse is that python -m <module> is somehow a
replacement for ./script - the logic within a script can do a lot more
than just firing off the __main__ of a module. Are we saying that
"scripts are considered harmful" and recommend people only support -m
for this?

There's over 7000 packages, applications and libraries in the
cheeseshop right now. A fair number of them would run face first into
the non-versioned binary problem. I guess distutils (in a future
version) should just deprecate the scripts/entry points options
entirely?

I really don't think this is an edge case, or should be unsupported.
Sure, the same problem exists outside of the .local directory - you
run into this installing things into the default system-level
site-packages and /usr/bin /usr/local/bin directories, but there's no
real reason we can't make this work better in the context of .local

jesse