[Opensync-devel] python site-packages, debian, and opensync

[Chris F. <cd...@fo...>]

Hi,

I'm not a python guy, so I'm looking for feedback.

Background:
-----------

I'm working on binary packaging and the opensync and plugin source
trees, in order to clean up duplication.  To that end, I'm working
on removing as many cmake modules that are now officially in cmake.
Less code to audit on our side if we can rely on cmake itself.

Unfortunately, some of our cmake modules have been hacked to add
special features.  In my opinion, these hacks belong in our own
CMakeLists.txt, not in our own copies of files like FindPythonLibs.cmake.
This way we easily know which is our code, and which is theirs.


The problem:
------------

Our FindPythonLibs.cmake was hacked to add PYTHON_VERSION.  It basically
called python and asked for its version number.  Simple enough.

I could copy that into the main wrapper/CMakeLists.txt, but there's another
issue.

Ubuntu and Debian have packaged python2.6 so that such modules are
installed into /usr/lib/python2.6/dist-packages instead of site-packages.
site-packages is not in the default path, as far as I know.

So to properly install our wrapper module into an official path, we now
need to know what the whole path name is, not just the version.

This is my attempt at implementing this feature:

http://repo.or.cz/w/opensync/opensync-cdf.git/commit/0ab5a7e597e8771b5a77a6070e78619bbca8fc9c


The question:
-------------

My question to python experts: is it right for opensync to install into
dist-packages?  In our debian binary packages, we will indeed want to install
into dist-packages, but from a source perspective, I'm not sure.  The
user should be installing to /usr/local/lib/dist-packages in that case,
and with the right cmake prefix, this will work fine.

Please let me know if you see any gotcha's with the plan.

Thanks,
- Chris