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

Tony Nelson tonynelson at georgeanelson.com
Sat Dec 23 20:12:52 CET 2006

At 8:42 PM +0100 12/2/06, Martin v. Löwis wrote:

Jan Claeys schrieb:

Like I said, it's possible to split Python without making things complicated for newbies. You may have that said, but I don't believe its truth. For example, most distributions won't include Tkinter in the "standard" Python installation: Tkinter depends on tkinter depends on Tk depends on X11 client libraries. Since distributors want to make X11 client libraries optional, they exclude Tkinter. So people wonder why they can't run Tkinter applications (search comp.lang.python for proof that people wonder about precisely that). I don't think the current packaging tools can solve this newbie problem. It might be solvable if installation of X11 libraries would imply installation of Tcl, Tk, and Tkinter: people running X (i.e. most desktop users) would see Tkinter installed, yet it would be possible to omit Tkinter.

Given the current packaging tools, could Python have stub modules for such things that would just throw a useful exception giving the name of the required package? Perhaps if Python just had an example of such a stub (and Tkinter comes to mind), packagers would customize it and make any others they needed?

TonyN.:' The Great Writ <mailto:tonynelson at georgeanelson.com> ' is no more. <http://www.georgeanelson.com/>

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