Python frameworks

[Russell Jones]

From: Ryan Schmidt [ryandesign at macports.org]
Sent: 08 August 2011 17:50
To: Russell Jones
Cc: mark brethen; macports-users at lists.macosforge.org
Subject: Re: Python frameworks

> Are you suggesting that a port, such as py27-pylint, should install different contents (e.g. a pylint symlink, or not), depending on what python has been selected with "sudo port select python"? 

Yes.

> If so, I would be strongly against that. "port select" is exclusively for a user's convenience; no port should change how it installs or functions based on what the user may or may not have "port select"ed.

I can kind of see why you wouldn't want this on principle, but could you elaborate? Why should a user have to select which version of python they want for every package, when in the majority of cases the same version will be desired? Having a default doesn't exclude exceptions.

I guess the main problem would be the case where a user switches back and forth constantly between selections, making it a poor basis for variant selection.

If one port selects gcc-mp-4.5, say, doesn't that mean it will be used as the system gcc, and so to compile ports? I can see that's undesirable (inconsistent packages, untested toolchains, etc)

On the other hand, if a user selected +as_python for a bunch of ports as a deliberate (and hopefully comprehended) action because they want to have only one place where they set the python version, I think such problems would be avoided.

Russell