from __future__ import * 20.2.2004

PackageManager repository update

Another update to my OS X 10.3 Package Manager repository

New packages:

• PySQLite 0.5.0, Python wrapper for SQLite, an embeddable SQL database engine (linked statically against SQLite 2.8.12 configured with --enable-utf8).

pth files are your friend

Why is it that many Python packages insist on littering your site-packages folder? It's not very hard to make a setup.py that has its own little microcosm referenced by a pth file, and it makes the user's life so much better. See Numeric, PIL, or PyObjC for decent examples.

Bonus: the user can easily uninstall, cleanly upgrade, or even move the package to an alternate location simply by moving it and changing the path in the pth.

Update: It looks like this is done with the extra_path argument to setup(...). I would've mentioned it, but I didn't realize that it wasn't documented outside of the source, mailing lists, and files in an old CVS attic!