2009/7/9 Nick Coghlan <ncogh...@gmail.com>: > Paul Moore wrote: >> - some cases are not simple, and it's not clear to me how useful >> "nearly always accurate" data will be > > Since the accuracy can always be checked against the filesystem, I think > the metadata is useful even if not 100% reliable. Applications that need > the extra assurance (such as the distutils uninstaller itself) can check > the filesytem and complain when it differs from what it is claimed in > the package metadata.
The inaccuracy I was thinking of was that if distribution X's RECORD doesn't mention file Y, the implication is that X doesn't "own" Y. There's no way of checking this against the filesystem - RECORD is the only place that says that X owns Y. I was thinking in terms of "does anyone else mind if I delete/overwrite this file?" queries, not uninstallation. > One thing that did occur to me based on this - do we want the format to > support designation of files (such as config files) that *shouldn't* be > uninstalled along with everything else? Or are we happy with not > mentioning the file in RECORD at all as the means of supporting that use > case? No. In my view, the uninstall feature is a relatively minor issue - people who want uninstall facilities generally use system packages (or complain that easy_install doesn't support uninstallation :-)). They aren't using setup.py install. (Of course, my experience is minimal in this regard, so maybe I'm wrong). Remember that the PEP says "Distutils will provide a **very basic** uninstall function" (my emphasis). Unless I'm misunderstanding, no-one is intending to use the new distutils uninstall feature in their own package manager (bdist_wininst, RPM, apt, ...) Paul. _______________________________________________ Python-Dev mailing list Python-Dev@python.org http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-dev Unsubscribe: http://mail.python.org/mailman/options/python-dev/archive%40mail-archive.com
