[links] reading Daily Python

Aaron Bentley aaron.bentley at utoronto.ca
Thu May 11 23:38:43 BST 2006


John A Meinel wrote:

> I think bzr should have a PyPI entry, and if possible, you should be
> able to use:
> easy_install bazaar-ng

I used to think easy_install was a good idea, but now I no longer do.  I 
would rather have a single, monolithic installer that installs bzr, and 
installs the libraries we use inside the bzr directories.

I like package management, but on platforms that have native package 
management (e.g. Debian, Red Hat, Ubuntu), having two package managers 
(e.g. apt & easy_install) leads to headaches.  For example, installing 
TurboGears on Debian is annoying, because it wants to install a 
different version of ElementTree, when I already have one.  And since I 
have packages installed that depend on ElementTree, I can't apt-get 
remove ElementTree, either.

There is also the possibility of incompatibility between specific 
versions of bzr and specific versions of the libraries it uses.

So for systems with package management, bzr can be a package that 
depends on ElementTree, etc, and things will work smoothly.  Or if 
there's no package for that platform, then people can install everything 
bzr needs all at once, in a way that won't interfere with anything else 
that's installed on the system.

easy_install, when used as intended, represents a middle path that I'm 
not comfortable walking.

Aaron




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