Re: [Distutils] formencode as .egg in Debian ??
-->"Phillip" == Phillip J Eby <pje@telecommunity.com> writes:
Phillip> Python developers would *love* to have Debian manage their
Phillip> packages, they would simply like to be able to verify at
Phillip> runtime that the management has in fact been done. It's not
Phillip> that we don't trust you, it's just that we're paranoid. :)
>From a Debian perspective, that's strictly your own affair. Debian
packages "just work", and if they don't it's a bug. There's no need for
anyone other than the packager to worry about this.
Of course, the application is free to do its own verification of this,
but it would need to use an internal mechanism: since there's no *need*
for it, Debian doesn't expose this information from its internal
dependency database.
Phillip> We'd like for Debian to advertise to our packages, precisely
Phillip> what versions of which of our dependencies are installed.
In general, I don't see why packages should care. Either it works, in
which case there's no problem, or it doesn't, in which case it's a
packaging bug, and it will be fixed.
Of course, when supporting packages fail to provide a stable API, this
means you end up needing to install multiple versions, or have the
application adapt internally.
Supporting the installation and simultaneous use of multiple versions
seems to be a goal of eggs? FWIW, that's kinda heretical on Unix (which
might explain some of the antipathy).
Phillip> We'd also like for Debian to include the metadata we provided
Phillip> with our packages, when it installs them.
It think that's a reasonable expectation. So long as Python packages
are location-agnostic, and allow Debian to put such things where it
thinks is reasonable?
Phillip> And we'd like all this to cleanly work with any
Phillip> locally-installed non-Debian eggs that might be in the mix,
Phillip> since we need to do development, beta testing, etc.
And non-egg packages as well, right? But again, I don't see why that
would be a problem.
Perhaps it's worth pointing out: Debian users typically don't recognise
dependency management as a problem, because it's not a problem for them.
If you can't apt-get something, the choice is to wait a month for it to
arrive in unstable, or to enter a world of pain where you're dealing
with other (often conflicting) dependency management systems or no
dependency management at all (and btw, this is the commonality I think
eggs have with CPAN and PEAR).
Debian developers take their role of banishing this problem seriously,
which I suppose is why this is a contentious topic.
d
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