[magnus@therning.org: Python distutils without python-dev?]

[Magnus Therning]

On Mon, Jul 18, 2005 at 10:38:26AM +0200, Matthias Klose wrote:
>On Sat, 2005-07-16 at 23:34 +0100, Magnus Therning wrote:
>>On Sat, Jul 16, 2005 at 11:10:14AM +0200, Dennis Kaarsemaker wrote:
>>>On za, 2005-07-16 at 09:19 +0100, Magnus Therning wrote:
>>>>Is there a reason to provide distutils somewhat crippled like this, or
>>>>is it a bug?
>>>
>>>There is a reason: the same reason that build-essential and sshd aren't
>>>installed by default. Aunt Tilly won't be needing python-dev (including
>>>distutils), just like she won't need build-essential or sshd, so why
>>>install it by default?
>>
>>The python module distutils is part of python2.4 (installed by default
>>since ubuntu-desktop needs it), but it seems useless without installing
>>python2.4-dev. So, it seems Aunt Tilly get's a worthless distutils
>>whether she needs it or not, and if she ever would need it she will see
>>the error message:
>>
>> error: invalid Python installation: unable to open /usr/lib/python2.4/config/Makefile (No such file or directory)
>>
>>Then Aunt Tilly needs to find out what package contains this makefile
>>and install it.
>>
>>Is this a bug or not?
>
>Not a bug. distutils can be used to build and install pure python
>modules and applications. The -dev package is needed to build python
>extensions. Usually more stuff than python-dev is needed to sucessfully
>build an extension, i.e. a C and/or C++ compiler, and another -dev
>package, if you build a binding to a project written in C, i.e. mysql,
>dbus, gtk.

Cool, then I know, thanks!

/M

-- 
Magnus Therning                    (OpenPGP: 0xAB4DFBA4)
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http://therning.org/magnus

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