[reportlab-users] Anyone understand distutils

[Andy Robinson]

> Andy started an interesting thread on the
> TwistedMatrix list last week.  It started
> as some comments regarding first impressions
> of Twisted and then delved into some interesting
> issues about distutils on Win32 platforms.
> 
> http://tinyurl.com/1zr3


Actually we are working on distutils support right now.
Is there anyone here who really understands it?

Question 1.  The docs assume that setup.py lives
one directory above what you want to ship.  We made
'reportlab' the top directory in our CVS tree.
Are we irreparably stuffed or can one make a setup.py
whose home is "inside the package"?

(If we can't that's REALLY dumb.  I have a directory
c:\code on my disk with about 20 CVS projects under
it; they would each need c:\code\setup.py, or I
would need 20 separate 'parent' directories all on
my path.  Or have to 'install' after every edit and
code blind. Yuk either way.)

Question 2.  It's clear that the obvious place to
put functional code is under site-packages. Is it
expected that docs and examples and test suites should go 
there too? Or should they stay in whatever location you 
unpacked it into, and let the user decide what to do?  

Question 3.  If you make a soure distribution then
the 'install' command happens when you install. If
you make a Windows one, it happens when you build, not
when you install.  This latter one is a pain, but in
recent versions of bdist_wininst Thomas Heller has
fixed it.  Has anyone tried the RPM packager, and what
does that do?

The focus of (3) is tht I am looking for (or trying
to fake) a universal "I am being installed now"
hook to execute some code.  I was stunned to discover
that distutils doesn't have this.

Thanks,

Andy