> I have myself installed a "Python(xy)-Linux-Equivalent" on an UBUNTU
> distribution without any difficulty and, Johann, the apt packager take
> care itself of the good interplay between all individual packages.
> It's not that evident on an winXP machine ! Here is the challenge!
Exactly. Unix package managers solve exactly the problems that
Python(x,y) solves on Windows (as far as I understand).
That's why a Python(x,y) could be nicely crafted as simple
metapackage(s) that pulls down dependencies from the standard package
manager. It would be relatively little effort (mostly writing text
files, AFAIK) and helpful. Creating new packages from zero is much
more effort, more risky and not significantly more helpful, IMHO.
> > But if you care about us (and I hope so!), you could help testing of
> > the packages in Python(x,y) on Linux, and provide advice to the major
> > distributions (Ubuntu, Fedora, Gentoo) on what versions bundle together.
>
> Of course, we care about everybody here ... but :
> I have myself some experience on Ubuntu where python is specially well
> managed, on Fedora limited to C5, because of migration towards Ubuntu,
> and RedHat, at work.
> I can give some opinion about these, but for sure, I won't install
> Gentoo to give an opinion. I would prefer someone here using Gentoo,
> to give is own opinion about it.
I am a Gentoo user, and I never had serious problems with versions of
scipy/numpy/matplotlib there maintained (at worst, I had to unmask
some unstable version). People managing the scipy/numpy/matplotlib
packages do maintain a tree of dependencies. What you can do is just
looking at the package repositories of major distributions and saying
things like "hey!in my experience, version a.b of A does not match
very well version c.d of B due to bug Z!" to package maintainers -and
providing the metapackages.
> Now, about Linux in general the real difficulty is to pick out a
> minimum set of package to do something. This minimum depends on the
> "something", and "minimum" is user-dependent also.
> I can give some experience about driving matlab-users towards python,
> as an example to fix the "something", the "minimum" would be ipython
> at least . If your minimum is
> an Eclipse workbench, I have no special experience but there is no
> difficulty to install it ===> apt-cache search eclipse .
Exactly. It seems the Python(x,y) package collection is nice (for me,
especially if there is Wx too along with Qt). I don't know if I'd
personally bundle Eclipse (tried to use it, didn't like it, came back
to simple Kate editor) but it's not going to hurt either.
Answering to rese:
>I am using Suse Linux (opensuse in fact), and it is a NIGHTMARE to
>keep up with updating all these packages or even installing some of
>them, EVEN IF some of these (or many of these) are available as Suse
>compatible rpm versions. I am reinstalling all these things on
>different computers (since I have to manage 3 or 3 PCs) and this is
>really a nightmare to keep the same versions etc.
Why is it a nightmare? It really seems it's a problem with you not
using the package management properly / SuSE packages being bad.
I manage three computers, two Gentoo Linux and a Kubuntu one, plus an
OS X partition, and I've no problems in managing my scipy/numpy/mpl/
wxpython combo on the Linux systems. Could you please tell what
specific troubles are you meeting?
Problem for me is OS X, where it is PURE HELL. Guys, seriously: if you
can do something to streamline OS X installs, *do it* and I'll bow to
you forever :)
>So a BUNDLE including all these packages with an update of the
>versions of each sub package is VERY USEFUL and remove the need to go
>and check each subpackages and dozens of web pages to see what is what
>and which version evolved.
You are asking for a metapackage, not a bundle. Add +1 to the
metapackage request
>But with Linux, this argument
>fails miserably.
It fails miserably, indeed, if you use source packages.
Use your package manager (or tell your package repository maintainers
to include packages you need).
I started using Linux, almost five years ago, also for the *ease* of
installing programs on it using package managers. No more web
searches, cds, anti-piracy measures and so on: just fire up Synaptic,
tick'em, install...
m.