Re: ReportLab 3.x packaging and deployment

On 13/01/2014 20:26, Andy Robinson wrote:
>>> Wouldn't your time be better spent making wheels instead of exes or msis?
>
> We're all completely new to wheels.  I frequently run pip over
> requirements files for a couple of dozen substantial web apps on Mac
> OS and Linux, and have never noticed wheels rolling past or anything
> with that extension, although I can't claim to have looked.
>
> Dumb questions, but will all the pips and easy_installs out there in
> the wild know what to do with a wheel?  Do they actually remove the
> need for us to ship .msi or .exe, today?
........
One of the things I find pretty dumb is that some of these installer systems 
seem to want to change the package names at the point of install. So If I first 
install with setup.py+distutils I get

venv/..../site-packages/reportlab

with setup.py+setuptools I get something like

venv/....site-packages/reportlab-3.0a1-py3.3-win32.egg/reportlab
+ easy_install.pth

isn't this a recipe for confusion? I've edited the wrong code several times 
whilst messing with these. None seem to want to warn about or remove existing 
versions of the package(s) they install which cannot be good. I'm unlikely to 
find a python executable that can run different versions of python or on 
different architectures and if I install multiple versions of package x, I 
should prefer only see the last.
-- 
Robin Becker