[Python-Dev] [Distutils] how to easily consume just the parts of eggs that are good for you (original) (raw)
Gael Varoquaux gael.varoquaux at normalesup.org
Wed Apr 9 09:54:16 CEST 2008
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On Wed, Apr 09, 2008 at 11:37:07AM +1000, Ben Finney wrote:
zooko <zooko at zooko.com> writes:
> I am skeptical that prorgammers are going to be willing to use a new > database format. They already have a database -- their filesystem -- > and they already have the tools to control it -- mv, rm, and > PYTHONPATH. Many of them already hate the existence the > "easyinstlal.pth" database file, and I don't see why a new database > file would be any different.
Moreover, many of us already have a database of all packages on the system, not just Python-language ones: the package database of our operating system. Adding another, parallel, database which needs separate maintenance, and only applies to Python packages, is not a step forward in such a situation.
90 % (at least) of the world does not have such database. I, and probably you, have such a very nice database. I works well, and we can choose to forget the problems our users are facing. It does not solve them though.
In addition, packaging is system-specific. I recently had to learn some Debian packaging, because I wanted my Ubuntu and Debian users to be able to use my projects seamlessly. What about RPMs for RHEL, Fedora, Mandriva? ... and coronary packages? and MSIs? ... When do I find time to do development if I have to learn all this packaging.
It would be fantastic to have an abstraction on all these packaging systems, including, as you point out, their database. I do agree that reusing the system packaging's database is great, and would be the best option for system-wide install. However one of the very neat features of setuptools and eggs is that you don't need administrator access to install the packages, and that is great in a shared environment, like a computation cluster. The system's database is thus unfortunately not a complete solution to the problem.
My 2 cents,
Gaël
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