[Zope3-dev] Building standalone ZPT from Zope 3 using zpkgtools

[Fred Drake]

On 4/22/05, Shane Hathaway <shane at hathawaymix.org> wrote:
> don't think zpkgtools wants to manage dependencies on the whole system,
> yet that's what users need.

Yes.  It should be possible for zpkg to assemble the requirements
metadata from components so that it all gets reported to distutils (if
distutils grows the ability to deal with it), but that's it.  I don't
think distutils wants to do any more with it than pass it along to the
system-level tools (rpm or whatever is being used).

> However, the application I was trying to run wouldn't work, and it took
> me hours to figure out I needed a version of glibc that took advantage
> of the kernel's event API.  CPAN couldn't have known that because it's
> not aware of the whole system.  I solved the problem using Portage.

Bingo.  I don't think that's in scope for zpkg, but that's just my opinion.

> So zpkgtools sounds like a great tool for ensuring high-quality
> releases, but I don't think it should also manage package installation.
>  Generating something like setup.py, and doing little more, is the best
> thing for zpkgtools to do.

I agree.  At this point, there's little that gets done on the target
system that isn't plain distutils; the zpkg stuff on that end does
little more than prepare the metadata for distutils to consume.

I will note that Philipp Eby's "EGG" packages look pretty interesting.
 I hope I get some time to play with those before too long.


  -Fred

-- 
Fred L. Drake, Jr.    <fdrake at gmail.com>
Zope Corporation