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

"Martin v. Löwis" martin at v.loewis.de
Tue Nov 28 19:17:04 CET 2006

Robin Bryce schrieb:

python2.4 profile (pstats) etc, was removed due to licensing issues rather than FHS. Should not be an issue for python2.5 but what, in general, can a vendor do except break python if their licensing policy cant accommodate all of pythons batteries ?

If some vendor has a valid concern about the licensing of a certain piece of Python, they should bring that up while the LSB is being defined.

python2.4 distutils is excluded by default. This totally blows in my view but I appreciate this one is a minefield of vendor packaging politics. It has to be legitimate for Python / setuptools too provide packaging infrastructure and conventions that are viable on more than linux.

Again, that a decision for the LSB standard to make. If LSB defines that distutils is part of LSB (notice the If: this is all theoretical; the LSB doesn't yet define anything for Python), then each vendor can still chose to include distutils or not, if they don't, they wouldn't comply to that version of LSB. So it is always their choice what standard to follow.

OTOH, certain customers demand LSB conformance, so a vendor that choses not to follow LSB may lose customers.

I personally agree that "Linux standards" should specify a standard layout for a Python installation, and that it should be the one that "make install" generates (perhaps after "make install" is adjusted). Whether or not it is the LSB that needs to specify that, I don't know, because the LSB does not specify a file system layout. Instead, it incorporates the FHS - which might be the right place to define the layout of a Python installation. For the LSB, it's more import that "import httplib" gives you something working, no matter where httplib.py comes from (or whether it comes from httplib.py at all).

Regards, Martin

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