[Python-Dev] draft PEP: virtual environments (original) (raw)

Antoine Pitrou solipsis at pitrou.net
Mon Oct 31 15:13:11 CET 2011

On Mon, 31 Oct 2011 07:50:24 +0000 (UTC) Vinay Sajip <vinay_sajip at yahoo.co.uk> wrote:

Antoine Pitrou <solipsis pitrou.net> writes:

> I don't understand why a zip file makes this easier (especially the > "update selectively" part). Not a zip file specifically - just a binary stream which organises scripts to be installed. If each class in a hierarchy has access to a binary stream, then subclasses have access to the streams for base classes as well as their own stream, and can install selectively from base class streams and their own stream.

Isn't that overengineered? We're talking about a couple of files. It's not even obvious that third-party tools will want to modify them, instead of writing their own (if the venv API is stable, it should be relatively easy).

I'm not saying you couldn't do this with e.g. directory trees; it just seems neater to have the scripts in a black box once they're deployed, with a zip file representing that black box.

I don't know why it's neater. After all, we install .py files in their original form, not in a zipfile (even though Python supports the latter).

Regards

Antoine.

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