Ville Vainio <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> writes: > Paul> I can't parse that. It says two contradictory things. > Paul> Sentence 2 says that if something essential is not in the > Paul> (Python) distro then the (Python) distro maintainers have > Paul> screwed up. Sentence 1 says it's the Fedora maintainer's > Paul> job to deal with it. Huh? > > By "distro" I meant the Linux distribution, not the Python > distribution. Distro is a customary term for a Linux distribution so I > didn't qualify the word at the time.
Oh ok, but it's the Python distribution that's missing components that are essential to Python. Fedora and other Linux distros are collections of subsystems like Python. Linux distro maintainers get asked to include a subsystem, they check that the subsystem has a reasonable reputation (Python does), they install it in the distro and run some basic tests, and they ship it. They can't be expected to immerse themselves in its intricacies and hang out on the user forums to identify all the missing components that they should also hunt down and ship. So the Python needs to take care of that stuff. I realize that in the old days, people used to write big applications without makefiles, and later when they started using makefiles, they didn't use configure scripts. So to install a package, you had to do a bunch of hand configuration for your particular environment before you could compile it, and maybe you even had to say cc -O -Dthisflag=thatnumber xyz.c pqr.c frob.c -o frob on the command line instead of typing "make" to build the program. That kind of thing really doesn't fly any more. The standards for what constitutes a properly engineered release of something have gotten higher. You really need automatic configuration and build and installation. Likewise, if you're trying to market something as a complete drop-in system ("batteries included", to use the Python terminology), it should not be missing any essential pieces that the user has to hunt down separately. -- http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list