Code review comment for lp://staging/~barry/pkgme/envar

On Dec 18, 2010, at 01:29 AM, James Westby wrote:

>Review: Approve
>8 +To run pkgme out of your virtualenv, set the ``$PKGME_EXTERNAL_BACKEND_PATHS``
>9 +environment variable to the directory inside the pkgme source tree named
>10 +``backends/``. For example::
>
>Is this needed as it currently doesn't install the backends?

Right. I do think the right thing (eventually) to do is to install the
backends via 'python setup.py install'.

>62 +if PKGME_EXTERNAL_BACKEND_PATHS is None:
>63 + EXTERNAL_BACKEND_PATHS = ["/usr/share/pkgme/backends/"]
>64 +else:
>65 + EXTERNAL_BACKEND_PATHS = PKGME_EXTERNAL_BACKEND_PATHS.split(os.pathsep)
>66 root_dir = os.path.join(
>67 os.path.dirname(os.path.abspath(__file__)), os.pardir)
>68 if os.path.exists(os.path.join(root_dir, "setup.py")):
>69 - EXTERNAL_BACKEND_PATHS.insert(0, os.path.join(root_dir, "pkgme", "backends"))
>70 + EXTERNAL_BACKEND_PATHS.insert(
>71 + 0, os.path.join(root_dir, "pkgme", "backends"))
>
>If PKGME_EXTERNAL_BACKEND_PATHS overrides /usr/share/pkgme/backends/ should
>it also override the ones in the source tree? Is that what "EXTERNAL" is there
>for? I'm not sure why you would want to override, but not completely override.
>Given that most backends are likely to be in your source tree, the env variable
>won't have a lot of effect if you are running from source.

I think you're right, it should. But then, the envar should probably be
called $PKGME_BACKEND_PATHS (drop the EXTERNAL).

>I have no problem adding an env var for this, but I think we should make it
>so that it isn't needed when doing development.

My test-fixes branch should take care of that, but I still think this
environment variable will be useful.