[PyX-devel] Re: Bug in Windows installer

[Joerg L. <jo...@us...>]

Hello Pieter,

On 29.12.04, pieter claassen wrote:
> I found a bug in the windows PYX installation this morning. If you prefer
> a post to the mailing list, then tell me.
> 
> setup.py line 56
> 
> "/etc" is supposed to be relative but seems to be absolute.
> 
> I changed it to "etc" and it solved the problem on a windows install, but
> not sure what th impact on Linux would be.

You're the second one to report this problem, so I'm CCing the pyx-devel
list.

Concerning the impact on Linux, the situation is as follows: The
directories in the data_files option are taken relative to the --root
directory which defaults to /usr under Linux. Hence, if we use etc
instead of /etc, the pyxrc file is installed under /usr/etc, which is
the incorrect place. Note that using an absolute path is even documented
in the Python distutils docs:

        http://www.python.org/doc/2.4/dist/node12.html

Thus, the windows error message is not really accurate ;-)

On the other hand, under Windows installing the pyxrc file under
whatever-directory\etc makes no sense at all, so we should look for a
better solution anyway. Unfortunately, the Python distutils package does
not really support the handling of configuration files very well, so we
have to invent something by ourselves. Probably, we have to check
for the platform in the setup.py file. But before, we have to find
a sensible place for the pyxrc file under Windows. Any ideas?

        Jörg