Re: question on packaging of python applications

[Bastian Kleineidam <calvin@cs.uni-sb.de>]

Hi,

it seems there are some points to _not_ precompile Python files.

- packages get bigger (they get substantially bigger, more than twice
  the size if they have lots of .py files)
- compatibility: I found the official wrapup
  Third party extensions built for Python 1.5.x or 1.6
  cannot be used with Python 2.0; these extensions will have
  to be rebuilt for Python 2.0. 

  Python bytecode files (*.pyc and *.pyo) are not
  compatible between releases. 

Ok, so if you use the distutils, use
python setup.py install --no-compile --root=`pwd`/debian/tmp
in your rules file and compile your .py files in the postinst script.

BTW: is there yet a .deb package for the Distutils? If not, I will package
it (when I am a Debian Developer, I am still in the queue).

Greetings, Bastian