[reportlab-users] ReportLab 2.2 deployment options

[Dinu Gherman]

Andy Robinson:


> Q1. How badly do people want setuptools, eggs, easy_install and so on?

> Is plain old distutils good enough?


I'm still not a big fan of setuptools, but I also use it now and,
unfortunately (or rather: unfortunately we don't have anything
better), it has taken off already and enough people want it
*really* badly.


> Q2. Should we try to do "batteries included", with the accelerator,

> optional C libraries for rendering bitmaps and the type 1 fonts

> included in the basic package and one setup script to build it all?


Yes.


> Our worry is:  you can use a lot of functionality with just the Python

> code and maybe the _rl_accel.c extension.  But if we want to put the

> graphics extensions  "in the box", we introduce dependencies on

> libart, freetype, libjpeg, PIL and so on.  Due to limited resources,

> we'd aim to test on Ubuntu 8.04 and Windows, but we would not want to

> spend our own time trying to make convoluted setup scripts work with a

> gazillion distros.


Friendly error messages and comprehensive testing will be your
friends...

Dinu