Re: [Visualpython-users] History and Status?

[Andy D. <dou...@la...>]

On Mon, 17 Feb 2003, Jonathan Brandmeyer wrote:

> Here is one idea for Debian that looks consistant with other Debian
> packages on my system.  I think that as binary debs, Vpython could be
> installed in three packages, like this:
> 
> python2.2-visual:
> 	Install runtime shared object library and runtime scripts in 
> 	/usr/lib/site-packages/visual
> 	Install documentation in /usr/share/doc/python-visual
 
> The first package is the only one that someone must have to get started
> with visual.  We can use the deb dependancy system to ensure that
> Numeric, Tkinter, and Python2.2 are installed if required.

One worry I have is that the versions required by VPython may not
necessarily match well with the versions supplied by the user's Linux
distribution.  As a specific example, the current 'stable' Debian
distribution (code name "Woody") has python-2.1.3 as its standard python.
I'm unclear whether or not a user can safely make '/usr/bin/python' be
python2.2 without possibly affecting other software installed on the
system.  In fact, in my experience with Vpython (which, admittedly, is
only 1 year long) the requirements of VPython (e.g. python version,
gtkglarea, numeric) have *never* been in agreement with the packages
available from my distribution.

Now I'm quite happy to install everything from source, so I always install
all vpython-related things into '/usr/local' or equivalent so as to not
overwrite the system versions.  If an automated Linux installation scheme
is going to update stuff in /usr/bin, then it had better do so with
extreme care.

-- 
    Andy Dougherty		dou...@la...
    Dept. of Physics
    Lafayette College, Easton PA 18042