[Distutils] Alternate static metadata PEP submission...

[David Cournapeau]

Ian Bicking wrote:
> On Tue, Oct 13, 2009 at 6:36 PM, Floris Bruynooghe
> <floris.bruynooghe at gmail.com> wrote:
>   
>> To me it would seem a little early to start a PEP like this, there's
>> been virtually no discussion about this particular proposal nor any
>> proof of concept code.  And given the scope of wanting to change the
>> entire way build-steps are declared some code that can give experience
>> and show the good and bad points seems important to me.
>>     
>
> Could an example API be encapsulated in something like this in setup.py?
>
>   from test_this_pep import setup_cfg
>   setup(other args, **setup_cfg())
>
> Then packages could be converted to test it out, without breaking the package.
>   

This would work for the parts which are concerned using static metadata
for what exists in distutils, but it would not work for pre_install,
etc... The only way I can think to make this work is to actually
generate a setup.py (or in the other direction, to generate a setup.info
from setup.py). I think it is much better long-term solution for a
'distutils  v2' than trying to fix the existing code, but it is
certainly a lot of work,

David