On Thu, Mar 27, 2008 at 01:55:25PM +0100, Ronald Oussoren wrote: > > On 25 Mar, 2008, at 20:11, Alexander Michael wrote: >> You can see Floris Bruynooghe's response >> earlier in the thread, but basically it is an even harder problem to >> create packages for every major platform automatically than it is to >> create a simple database of installed packages that plays well with >> every major package manager. > > Why is that? Looking in from the peanut gallery the major problem > with automaticly creating OS packages is political, in that some > packagers > don't believe that developers could create valid OS packages. > > The technical issues seem small compared to that.
If all I describe in [1] seems political to you then here some techinical difficulties: Developing the tools required to create MSI databases and CAB files for creating a MS windows install package on any platform python runs on would be a huge project (msilib is implemented by calling the MS C API). Likewise it would be a massive job to create the toolchain in python to create DEBs. I don't know much about RPMs and all other systems out there but if these two systems are any indication about the complexity then supporting *every* OS out there is pretty hard. Not to mention some small distro that has their own format few people care about. Supporing everything in python itself as well as allowing systems to use the python infrastructure is far easier. Regards Floris [1] http://mail.python.org/pipermail/distutils-sig/2008-March/009112.html > _______________________________________________ > Distutils-SIG maillist - Distutils-SIG@python.org > http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/distutils-sig -- Debian GNU/Linux -- The Power of Freedom www.debian.org | www.gnu.org | www.kernel.org _______________________________________________ Distutils-SIG maillist - Distutils-SIG@python.org http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/distutils-sig
