Re: Using python + pygtk in Desktop modules (was Re: Revisitingthe Gnome Bindings)

[Richard Boulton <richard tartarus org>]

On Tue, 2004-09-28 at 10:32 -0400, Sean Middleditch wrote:
> Say though that you have a third-party app written for pygtk which
> includes its own libraries that are installed solely for python 2.3.
> When python 2.4 comes along, that app *must* continue using 2.3.  Which
> means the app must be hard coded to only invoke the python 2.3 binary.
> Which is distribution specific.  Which forces app authors to release
> updated packages for their apps for newer distributions.  Which
> effectively kills any purpose of having ABI stability.  And, finally,
> which forces the management, selection, installation, and upgrading of
> installed packages onto the user.

If the user installs packages which are not provided by the
distribution, and particularly if said packages depend on extension
libraries that are not provided by the distribution, that installation
isn't going to be a simple "click and install" process.

The original question was about a package which would be included in
most (if not all) distributions depending on pygtk, which will also be
included in most (if not all) distributions.  There's no reason that
such a package would be hard to install, or hard to keep working in the
face of python version upgrades.

-- 
Richard