On Sat, Dec 13, 2008 at 1:30 AM, Nick Craig-Wood <n...@craig-wood.com> wrote: > David Cournapeau <courn...@gmail.com> wrote: >> On Thu, Dec 11, 2008 at 10:30 PM, Nick Craig-Wood <n...@craig-wood.com> >> wrote: >> > David Cournapeau <courn...@gmail.com> wrote: >> >> On Wed, Dec 10, 2008 at 12:04 PM, Chris Rebert <c...@rebertia.com> wrote: >> >> > On Tue, Dec 9, 2008 at 6:49 PM, <excor...@gmail.com> wrote: >> >> >> On Ubuntu, I accidentally manually installed setuptools >> >> >> http://pypi.python.org/pypi/setuptools/0.6c9 (by running the .egg file >> >> >> as a shell script via sudo), and now realize I should just be using >> >> >> apt to take care of my system Python packages. >> >> > >> >> > Really, why? setuptools has more Python packages/programs available >> >> > and updates faster than Debian. >> >> > It's also likely that some of the Debian Python packages are installed >> >> > using setuptools anyway. >> >> > So, why do you think apt and not setuptools is The Right Way(tm)? >> >> >> >> Setuptools is certainly not the right way to install packages >> >> system-wide on debian, it is very likely to break the whole thing. >> > >> > It wouldn't be too difficult to make a .deb target which would collect >> > all the files that did get installed into a package. It would be a >> > rather rough and ready package but would do the job. >> >> Depends what you mean by would do the job: rather rough certainly does >> not mean "would do the job" for something as essential as a package >> IMO. > > Essentially a package has files in it in a fixed possition in the > filesystem. The package manager's (dpkg at this level) job is to keep > track of those file and tell you about conflicts.
Yes, but this description is so high level that it hides the difficulty of the task :) First, and firstmost, it is difficult if not impossible to automatically translate from distutils/setuptools file locations to a typical debian (or most other distribution for that matter - the one which follow the FHS) description. Because distutils does not make the distinction between doc, data, etc... as well as for example autotools does. > > You can use alien to turn a tar.gz into a perfectly usable debian > package. It won't have dependencies, or help or any of the other > things a package needs to be a proper package, but it satisfies my > basic needs that all software is installed as packages, so it can be > uninstalled cleanly. This only works for very simple packages - pure python or no dependencies, no post/pre install scripts, etc... If you want to install a web framework, it won't be enough. If you want to install a package which depends on C libraries, it won't work either. > > However when I have to make my stuff work on Windows, I find > easy_install to be a fantastic timesaver as compared to looking for > the package on a web site, downloading it, unpacking it installing it > and then repeating for all the dependencies. I agree that its features are useful. I just don't think the implementation and the design are right - partly because it inherits some fundamental distutils deficiencies with respect to package description. David -- http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list
