cloudmatrix/myppy — Issue #2: Some implementation hints and questions
Author: merwok
Created: 2011-10-09 08:57:01+00:00
State: open

Hi. It seems I can’t add inline comments to README.rst, as github renders it to HTML instead of showing the source, so here are comments. I am a Python core developer in charge of distutils, BTW.

> Myppy is a set of tools for building and managing a portable python environment.
> The end result is something similar in spirit to `portable python`_ but can
> be built for a variety of different platforms.
You should also compare it to virtualenv.

> Currently targeted build environments are linux-i686 and OSX.
Why only i686?

> * Scripts installed by easy_install and pip embed the absolute path to the
> interpreter in the shebang line; they should be replaced by a loader stub
> that finds python at runtime.
This is controllable with the --executable option of the build_scripts command.

> * distutils and sysconfig embed the absolute library paths as they were at
> build time, meaning you can't properly build C-extensions if you move the
> environment around. They should be patched in a simlar way to virtualenv.
This may be changed in Python itself, as we want to support virtualenv-like functionality in the interpreter for 3.3.

> Why, everything that something like `portable python`_ is good for, but on
> Linux or OSX instead of Windows! Use it as a convenient portable scripting or
> testing environment, or to run multiple python versions side-by-side.
Is it also useful to put a Python on a USB stick and use it anywhere?