[smc-discuss] pypdf build system and github/non-free service (was Re: Project: PyPDFLib)

[Praveen A]

2010/10/5 Santhosh Thottingal <santhosh.thottingal at gmail.com>:
> Thanks!.
> I have prepared a TODO list for the tasks. You can see it in TODO file of the project(http://github.com/santhoshtr/pypdflib/). You may start with one of them.
> You can fork the project at github  and do the changes. I can merge the changes to main repo then.

I'm trying to build it, but it is failing since the build system seems
to be very new and got some rough edges.
http://github.com/santhoshtr/pypdflib/issues/#issue/6 I hit this
issue. I don't want to comment there since I have to create an account
on github (same reason why I did not create a launchpad account till
it became Free Software). I don't feel comfortable in using a non-free
software to develop Free Software. By choosing github, we are forcing
others to use it as well, because if one wants to contribute, he/she
has to use github. I know github has many features than gitorious.

Aren't we in the same trap as bitkeeper? Linus chose bitkeeper for its
features and its authors stopped offering it free of cost when some
one tried to create a Free Software client. Now we have git. When many
Free Software projects use github, it is a good advertisement for
them. On the desktop we started with Free tools like gcc, emacs when
GNU project started. Now we are in the moment of social coding and
cloud. Shouldn't we be liberating tools for them too?

4 people working full time is not even an argument for us to begin
with, how many people Microsoft employs?

My suggestion is to move to gitorious.com and help them with adding
missing features there.

Now once python-setuptools is installed (add this note to
README/instructions), python bootstrap.py is running but it fails with
following error.
pravi at savannah:/media/forge/pypdflib$ python bootstrap.py
install_dir /tmp/tmpOG1DzF
Download error: timed out -- Some packages may not be found!
Download error: timed out -- Some packages may not be found!
Download error: timed out -- Some packages may not be found!
Download error: timed out -- Some packages may not be found!
Download error: timed out -- Some packages may not be found!
Download error: timed out -- Some packages may not be found!
Download error: timed out -- Some packages may not be found!
Creating directory '/media/forge/pypdflib/bin'.
Creating directory '/media/forge/pypdflib/parts'.
Creating directory '/media/forge/pypdflib/eggs'.
Creating directory '/media/forge/pypdflib/develop-eggs'.
Getting distribution for 'distribute'.
install_dir /media/forge/pypdflib/eggs/tmp2Ui6GG
Before install bootstrap.
Scanning installed packages
Setuptools installation detected at /usr/lib/python2.6/dist-packages
Non-egg installation
Removing elements out of the way...
Already patched.
/usr/lib/python2.6/dist-packages/setuptools.egg-info already patched.
After install bootstrap.
Creating /usr/local/lib/python2.6/dist-packages/setuptools-0.6c11-py2.6.egg-info
error: /usr/local/lib/python2.6/dist-packages/setuptools-0.6c11-py2.6.egg-info:
Permission denied
An error occurred when trying to install distribute 0.6.14. Look above
this message for any errors that were output by easy_install.
While:
  Bootstrapping.
  Getting distribution for 'distribute'.
Error: Couldn't install: distribute 0.6.14

any ideas on this?
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