[ZODB-Dev] ZODB 3.3 beta 1 released

[Fred Drake]

On Tuesday 08 June 2004 12:00 am, Tim Peters wrote:
 > As I understand it so far, zpkg was used to create the ZODB release
 > tarball, but nothing in the generated setup.py within that tarball
 > requires zpkg -- the generated setup.py is purely a distutils script.  A

This is correct, partly.

The setup.py included in the ZODB 3.3 beta 1 distribution is indeed a 
perfectly valid distutils script.  The distribution contains the library code 
needed from zpkgtools, the Python library behind zpkg; this is in the 
Support/ directory of the distribution.  (The zpkgtools library is used by 
both the zpkg script used to build the distribution and the setup.py in the 
distribution.)

 > bunch of .cfg files are in the tarball (they're input to zpkg), but I
 > believe they're passive (were used by zpkg to create the tarball, but at
 > least so far have no active role beyond that).  Fred will correct me if
 > I'm wrong.

Again, partly right.

The various .cfg files are used to build the distribution, but some (and 
likely all eventually) are also used by the zkpgtools library that supports 
the setup.py included in the distribution.

There should be no reason for Debian to worry about zpkg in any way.  The 
distributions it creates are one of two things:

- a normal distutils package with a setup.py at the top level (like the ZODB 
3.3 beta), or

- a distributution with a "./configure ; make ; make install" interface (like 
the Zope X3 distros); these use distutils under the cover, but generally 
prefer to be handled through the non-distutils interface on Unix.  (For 
Windows, install.py can be used exactly as setup.py would normally be used.)

The zpkg distribution builder allows the support libraries to be omitted to 
allow smaller distributions, but I would not recommend that at this time, 
given that the support code is still changing as much as the rest of zpkg.  
Distributions that don't include the support code do require that the 
zpkgtools library and Phillip Eby's setuptools library be available on target 
systems.


  -Fred

-- 
Fred L. Drake, Jr.  <fred at zope.com>
PythonLabs at Zope Corporation