Re: Using Py_SetPythonHome

[Jan Kratochvil <jan dot kratochvil at redhat dot com>]

Hi Joel,

please take this mail "with a grain of salt", although only a bit.


On Wed, 03 Oct 2012 17:38:54 +0200, Joel Brobecker wrote:
> that we should cater to the needs of people who do not provide
> a distribution, but just a binary package.

There are not any such people.


> You need to understand that there are uses of Free
> Software other than distribution-provided binaries.

It is already a history.


> I still build a lot of software from sources,

Binaries outside of package management no longer exists and they should be
deleted ASAP if found as it is both a security hole and a too expensive
software management issue.


> to start somewhere in my home directory. But then, the sysadmin asked
> me to move it elsewhere because it takes too much room.

There do not exist any multi-user systems anymore.  Each developer has her own
virtual machine (in fact many of them), therefore sure with root access and
with proper normal automatic package management there.


> Should I have
> to recompile everything just because the world is now distro-centric?

Nobody is compiling software, this is happenning automatically in build farms.


> Should every company out there that provides binary packages deal
> with the problem on their own rather than share the feature just because
> it isn't a necessary feature in distro-style binaries?

There is no problem, all files and their locations are under the control of
package management of each GNU/Linux distro.


> Yes, it would be great if glibc dealt with it automatically for us.
> But what about Solaris, HP-UX, IRIX, Windows? Right now, there is
> no standard cross-platform way to deal with the problem. So each
> project is on its own. Not ideal, but still a fact that we have to
> deal with.

Please withstand those few remaining years on those proprietary systems and do
not try to reinvent GNU/Linux package management on top of them, that has been
tried already uncountable times and it does not work.  These proprietary
systems are doomed, their missing package management is a part of this fate.


> > > Going back to the actual subject of this discussion, would it cause
> > > a problem to call Py_SetPythonHome in your situation where everything
> > > is static and installed at the default location?
> > 
> > Yes, it is a problem because 99.9% of other Python-using packages behave
> > differently.
> 
> With this reasoning, would people ever inovate?

That is a great idea.  Packaging rules changes get proposed and discussed
first at:
	http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Packaging_Committee
Or sure an appropriate body in some other major GNU/Linux distro featuring
qualified people who can contribute to your idea.


Thanks,
Jan