[Python-Dev] bdist_* to stdlib? (original) (raw)

Guido van Rossum guido at python.org
Tue Feb 14 20:16:32 CET 2006

On 2/13/06, "Martin v. Löwis" <martin at v.loewis.de> wrote:

I'm actually opposed to bdistegg, from a conceptual point of view. I think it is wrong if Python creates its own packaging format (just as it was wrong that Java created jar files - but they are without deployment procedures even today).

I think Jars are a lower-level thing than what we're talking about here; they're no different than shared libraries, and for an architecture that has its own bytecode and toolchain it only makes sense to invent its own cross-platform shared library format (especially given the "deploy anywhere" slogan).

The burden should be on developer's side, for creating packages for the various systems, not on the users side, when each software comes with its own deployment infrastructure.

Well, just like Java, if you have pure Python code, why should a developer have to duplicate the busy-work of creating distributions for different platforms? (Especially since there are so many different target platforms -- RPM, .deb, Windows, MSI, Mac, fink, and what have you -- I'm no expert but ISTM there are too many!)

OTOH, users are fond of eggs, for reasons that I haven't yet understood.

I'm neutral on them; to be honest I don't even understand the difference between eggs and setuptools yet. :-) I imagine that users don't particularly care about eggs, but do care about the ease of use of the tools around them, i.e. ez_setup.

From a release management point of view, I would still like to make another bdistmsi release before contributing it to Python.

Please go ahead.

-- --Guido van Rossum (home page: http://www.python.org/~guido/)

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