RPM Packaging and Python Eggs

[Jeff Pitman]

Hi,

Just wanted to share this. As the Python Eggs concept proliferates,
there is an option to bypass the whole mess: --old-and-unmanageable.
This could be used as an alternative to patching setup.py to point to
the old distutils.

So:

%{__python} setup.py install --root=$RPM_BUILD_ROOT

Becomes:

%{__python} setup.py install --old-and-unmanageable --root=$RPM_BUILD_ROOT

Obviously, this breaks if it's a regular distutils setup.py. And, what
makes it more fun is that Py2.2 doesn't work. So, patching might be
the best when you care about that. If you're guaranteed that the spec
is only forward moving (ie extras and rawhide), then the option above
will work and make the spec cleaner.

While I've written off Eggs as a way to manage system-level python lib
packages, it may be useful for managing pkgs in $HOME for multi-user
systems. Thoughts?

--
-jeff