This is a brief and jaundiced overview of the format of Debian and RPMsource packages, what the Debian and RPM package systems theoreticallyuse to generate the compiled binary packages that people actuallyinstall. As usual, this applies to all distributions that use the Debian .deb package format or the Red Hat .rpm package format, althoughspecific details vary. Also, I'm going to simplify to the common case.

A source RPM contains a specfile, a source tarball, and some number ofpatches. The specfile describes

Even when there may be perfectly good third party modules for something,I really want there to be a module for itin Python's standard library. Part of the reason is obviously how Ifind third party modules to be awkward , butanother part of it is what I call the selection problem.

The selection problem is the problem of picking a thirdparty module (sometimes even finding it, although pypi helps with that) and figuring out if it'sany good. Simply figuring out the quality of a

One of my weaknesses is that with rare exceptions, I pretty much neveruse third party Python modules even when they'd make my life easier.I will sometimes use third party modules that are single files, butmulti-file modules are generally too annoying (especially if theyrequire compiling something).

The problem with third party modules is that installing and managingthem is usually too much work, especially if they are large. Youbasically have four choices:

• hope that all of the operating systems that you want to