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Please don't use "setuptools", the "rotten .egg" install system.

John Nagle nagle at animats.com
Thu Jan 19 12:05:28 EST 2012 
On 1/19/2012 12:56 AM, Lele Gaifax wrote:
> John Nagle<nagle at animats.com>  writes:
>
>> "egg" files are usually more trouble than they're worth.
>
> I find it really funny you say so, just after another thread where you
> proved yourself unable to come up with a working Python environment
> lacking an already packaged RPM of version 2.7...

     I can do it, I just have better things to do than system
administration.  The fact that Python doesn't "just work" is
part of why it's losing market share.

> I know "egg" are not standard, but these days are still the only way to
> install Python-related stuff that includes precompiled stuff, be it a
> Python module implemented in C, or a Pyjamas application, or simply
> .mo files containing gettext translations... *without* forcing the
> recipient to install all the needed "compiler chains".
>
> I really hope the distribute2 toolset will provide such nice capability.
>
> ciao, lele.

     If it can be built with "python setup.py build", go that way.
A "setup.py" script, invoked with the correct Python, reliably
knows which Python it is supposed to update.  "egg" files
usually have trouble with that.

     Prebuilt systems should use the installer for the distro, and
work with yum, apt-get, or the Windows installer as appropriate.

     It does seem to be necessary to install the development tools
on a Linux system just to get various Python packages to install.
Major packages are still all over the place.
PyPy is just a directory of links, not a repository like CPAN.

     Python sort of slips through the cracks.  Nobody is doing
the work to make PyPy handle these problems, and Python isn't
important enough for MySQL, etc. to support the connector for
the language.  (They support Perl, C, Java, etc., but not
Python.)

				John Nagle
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