[Distutils] command hooks...

[Paul Moore]

On 16 May 2012 07:55, Tarek Ziadé <tarek at ziade.org> wrote:

> I'd suggest you list what you can't do with "packaging" today and we work
> through that list to point which features are missing and should be
> developed *outside* the standard lib, and which ones are in "packaging" or
> should be

This would be a very good step - but rather than simply getting
responses in the mailing list, can I suggest that we need some sort of
central location where the features still outstanding for packaging
can be tracked. Call it a roadmap if you like. Maybe it should be a
PEP - simply because I can't think of a better place to put it, but
I'm open to suggestions (I don't think the bug tracker is the right
place, fwiw).

At the moment, the biggest issue I see is that there are lots of
discussions about what people believe is missing, but nothing clearly
documenting what's intended to be there (and what is not - for
example, your comment about entry points).

As a starter, my key "missing requirement" is support for binary
distributions - whether this is a new "universal" format, or whether
it is reusing the bdist_wininst/bdist_msi formats, I don't really
care, but it needs to be formalised with a migration path, backward
compatibility support considered, etc.

> IOW: packaging should only be the common basis and provide a basic installer
> - not a full fledge tool you can use to replace the most advanced setuptools
> features. And we want it pluggable enough so people can build pluggable
> features on the top of it, like Eric explained earlier
>
> Does that make sense ?

I would assume as a first guess that it should replace all of
distutils, though? Ideally there should be no reason for people to use
distutils for anything once packaging is available - am I right?

Paul.