Paul Boddie wrote: > Could anyone enlighten me/us as to why the Smart Package Manager [1] > (written in Python, presented at EuroPython this year) isn't being more > closely investigated as part of a suitable solution?
More closely investigated by whom, as a solution for what? Surely there is someone somewhere investigating it as a solution for something, so your presupposition that it isn't would seem to imply that you have some more specific person(s) and solution(s) in mind. :) If you are speaking with respect to setuptools, I would just point out that it is intended to be packaging-system neutral. While the easy_install package manager will work on most platforms supported by Python, it's intended only for tasks that cannot be accomplished using the local package management system. So, I've definitely "closely investigated" package management tools "as part of a suitable solution," and have recently added features to make eggs work better with package management tools. This consideration, however, does not extend to providing any special integration with any *particular* package management tools, especially since some systems (e.g. Windows) have little or no such support, and a common usage environment for Python web applications at least (shared hosting providers) offer no way to *use* the system package manager at all. That having been said, a few quick glances at Smart's source code show me that Smart itself could perhaps benefit from eggs, for example to handle plugins for channels and distribution types. Its hook system, for example, could be handled in a decentralized way. Also, in theory at least, it looks like Smart could be extended to recognize eggs and manage them as well, but I haven't looked deeply into any of these questions since they're not in scope for my efforts at this time. However, it would certainly appear that *someone* could investigate making Smart a bigger part of some "suitable solution" for something. :) -- http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list
