[Python-3000] Proposal: No more standard library additions

[Phillip J. Eby]

At 12:00 PM 10/14/2006 +0200, "Giovanni Bajo" <rasky at develer.com> wrote:
>Ivan Krsti? wrote:
> > Talin wrote:
>
> > That'd be nice. And on that note, for the love of confused masses
> > everywhere, can we please change the name of easy_install to something
> > Python-specific, such as 'egg' or 'py_install'?
>
>+1. I think at some point I heard mentioned the name 'nest' for a program that
>manages eggs. I am not sure whether Philip's wanted it to have the features of
>easy_install or not, though.

Yes.  "nest" will be an overall command similar to "yum" or other package 
managers of its ilk, with subcommands like "nest install" that will work 
like easy_install.

However, "nest install" will not have easy_install's arcane option set, nor 
will it be able to do all the things easy_install does.  Instead, things 
like "easy_install -eb. packagename" (fetch and unpack a project's sources 
to a subdirectory) will become something like "nest source packagename", so 
that there are separate commands for different use cases instead of one 
arcane super-command.

Also, instead of using options to specify installation locations, it's 
likely that nest will have, well, "nests", which are configured locations 
for installing packages, scripts, source, headers, etc.  So at most you 
would specify what nest to use when invoking a command.  But there will 
also be a "nest use nestname" command that will invoke a subshell in which 
the given nest will be the default.

But before anybody asks, I have no clue when I'll even be able to start on 
writing nest, let alone finishing it.  I'm still shoring up leaks in the 
abstractions of setuptools as it sits; for example, last night an OSAF 
developer discovered that the 'ext_package' option to setup() (which I'd 
forgotten even existed) didn't work right with setuptools' "test" 
feature.  Distutils is *very* very big.  :(  If I'd known what I was 
getting into before I started, I'm not sure I would've done it.

Distutils itself is in sore need of a 3K-ing.