According to this blog entry, the main reasons you should
NEVER install a Python module system-wide with setuptools/ez_setup on your Debian system
are
that you can have different versions of the same Python modules in different installation paths (installed via easy_install
and aptitude
)
there is no easy_uninstall
. (However, pip
seems to be able to do this: How do I remove packages installed with Python's easy_install?)
The same applies to a CLI tool, which also is a (Python) module of sorts.
Of course, packaging for easy_install
requires less work than packaging for all the system package managers out there. But why don't you package your tool with easy_install
and ask somebody who is familiar with packaging for the particular targets for help? (For Debian, you can try sending an e-mail to submit@bugs.debian.org
with a subject that starts with "[needs-packaging]".)
Let me tell only from my limited experience as user -- Python and Debian/Ubuntu. When I finally switched from Windows to Ubuntu, one of the main reasons was the painless installation of almost all software that has been packaged for Debian. One of the questions during the first period of transition were:
"What's the most recent multi-way diff tool? OK, there's meld and diffuse. Let's see..."
sudo apt-get install meld diffuse
"OK. And this clipboard manager was called Parcellite?"
sudo apt-get install parcellite
"I love Task Coach. Do they have it?"
sudo apt-get install taskcoach
"Now why is svn
not installed out of the box?"
sudo apt-get install svn
... (some error)
apt-file search svn
... (tl;dr)
apt-file search svn | grep /svn$
sudo apt-get install subversion
So much for the convenience of packaging. Note that at least the first two tools mentioned are pure Python tools, but I don't care -- the system package manager does everything for me. Perhaps I would have even installed them using easy_install
if that was the only option, but then I could have been made aware of the risks of systemwide installations using easy_install
, and would have dropped it.