[Python-Dev] Packaging and binary distributions for Python 3.3 (original) (raw)

Vinay Sajip vinay_sajip at yahoo.co.uk
Mon Oct 17 15:39:53 CEST 2011

Paul Moore <p.f.moore gmail.com> writes:

Correct me if I'm wrong, but if we standardised on a particular structure, the hooks.py contents could actually be integrated into the core, if we wanted? People could still write hooks for more complex cases, but the basic binary build case could work out of the box that way.

Well, the hooks.py is there to allow user-defined setups which are outside the scope of what should be provided in the stdlib - for instance, my earlier example about PowerShell scripts is IMO out-of-scope for the stdlib itself, but perfectly fine for the documentation, say in a set of example recipes in a packaging HOWTO. The hooks aren't needed at all for conventional deployments - only when you need something out of the ordinary. We could certainly extend the setup.cfg scheme to have specific support for pre-compiled binaries, which are currently "out of the ordinary" (which of course is why this thread is here :-)).

Life could be made easier for distribution authors by initially having well documented examples or recipes, and later, if the ubiquity of certain patterns is established, better support might be provided in the stdlib for those patterns. But there are other changes we could make now - for example, the list of categories does not include a library location (necessitating my use of a "compiled" category), but perhaps a "lib" category could be built in now.

Regards,

Vinay Sajip

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