On 14 Jan, 08:47, "A.T.Hofkamp" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > > Rather than re-inventing the wheel, please have a look at distutils: > http://docs.python.org/lib/module-distutils.html > > It does most if not all of the things you want to do. > If you want something more advanced, read about eggs.
Although distutils does some of the work needed by the inquirer, it falls far short of what is needed to make a Debian package - that's why you have the "new" Debian Python policy and why the authors specifically refer to both distutils and setuptools in that document. Meanwhile, even stdeb [1] doesn't appear to completely automate the production of Debian packages using distutils. The Debian packages that I've attempted to make have, in fact, mostly employed distutils to "install" the files into the package, and as the policy document indicates, you have to turn off various setuptools features to persuade that software to play along if you're using it. However, there's a lot of other stuff that neither distutils nor setuptools do adequately, and setuptools' lack of integration with the non-Python universe doesn't exactly make it a great replacement for the system package and dependency managers in most GNU/Linux distributions. I've been tempted at various points to use something like SCons (or similar [2]) rather than work around undesirable behaviour in distutils. And although some might say that setuptools is an improvement on distutils, it's an improvement in a direction that interests me very little. Paul [1] http://stdeb.python-hosting.com/ [2] http://wiki.python.org/moin/ConfigurationAndBuildTools -- http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list
