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</o:shapelayout></xml><![endif]--></head><body lang=EN-US link=blue vlink=purple><div class=WordSection1><p class=MsoNormal><span style='font-size:11.0pt;font-family:"Calibri",sans-serif'>Changing packaging by updating the standard library will fail. It’s been attempted.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class=MsoNormal><span style='font-size:11.0pt;font-family:"Calibri",sans-serif'><o:p> </o:p></span></p><p class=MsoNormal><span style='font-size:11.0pt;font-family:"Calibri",sans-serif'>The inherent problem is you need to fix packaging for people already using python, which means if you add a feature to the standard library, only the people who always run the latest and greatest can ever use the feature. In a world where we are talking about Python 3.6/3.7 and python 2.7 is by far the most used version of python (and python usage is split pretty evenly between 3.4 and 3.5 IIRC), no one will use new packaging features in the standard library.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class=MsoNormal><span style='font-size:11.0pt;font-family:"Calibri",sans-serif'><o:p> </o:p></span></p><p class=MsoNormal><span style='font-size:11.0pt;font-family:"Calibri",sans-serif'>Putting something in setuptools means it will actually be used. I think some of the goals of this sig is to be able to completely sunset distutils and replace it with much better solutions (plural) that all speak the same protocol.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class=MsoNormal><span style='font-size:11.0pt;font-family:"Calibri",sans-serif'><o:p> </o:p></span></p><div style='border:none;border-left:solid blue 1.5pt;padding:0in 0in 0in 4.0pt'><div><div style='border:none;border-top:solid #E1E1E1 1.0pt;padding:3.0pt 0in 0in 0in'><p class=MsoNormal><b><span style='font-size:11.0pt;font-family:"Calibri",sans-serif'>From:</span></b><span style='font-size:11.0pt;font-family:"Calibri",sans-serif'> Distutils-SIG [mailto:distutils-sig-bounces+tritium-list=sdamon.com@python.org] <b>On Behalf Of </b>Sylvain Corlay<br><b>Sent:</b> Monday, August 22, 2016 2:16 AM<br><b>To:</b> Ralf Gommers <ralf.gommers@gmail.com><br><b>Cc:</b> distutils-sig <distutils-sig@python.org><br><b>Subject:</b> Re: [Distutils] Proposed new Distutils API for compiler flag detection (Issue26689)<o:p></o:p></span></p></div></div><p class=MsoNormal><o:p> </o:p></p><div><div><div><p class=MsoNormal style='margin-bottom:12.0pt'>Hi,<o:p></o:p></p></div><div><div><p class=MsoNormal>On Sun, Aug 21, 2016 at 10:31 PM, Ralf Gommers <<a href="mailto:ralf.gommers@gmail.com" target="_blank">ralf.gommers@gmail.com</a>> wrote:<o:p></o:p></p><blockquote style='border:none;border-left:solid #CCCCCC 1.0pt;padding:0in 0in 0in 6.0pt;margin-left:4.8pt;margin-right:0in'><div><div><div><div><p class=MsoNormal><br>On top of that there are technical reasons (don't want to test combinations of python + setuptools that both change per release) and organizational ones (distutils maintenance is terrible, many simple bugfix patches don't get merged for ages, setuptools at least fixes regressions quite fast).<o:p></o:p></p></div><div><p class=MsoNormal><o:p> </o:p></p></div><div><p class=MsoNormal>I'm not sure if there's an official policy on adding new things to distutils, but if not then this request is a good time to make one. Assuming of course that the setuptools devs are willing to merge features like the one from Sylvain.<o:p></o:p></p></div></div><p class=MsoNormal><o:p> </o:p></p></div></div></blockquote></div></div></div><div><p class=MsoNormal><o:p> </o:p></p></div><p class=MsoNormal>I find this worrying that the main arguments to not include a patch would be that<o:p></o:p></p><div><p class=MsoNormal><o:p> </o:p></p><div><p class=MsoNormal><span style='font-size:9.5pt'> - this part of the standard library is not very maintained (things don't get merged)<o:p></o:p></span></p></div><div><p class=MsoNormal><span style='font-size:9.5pt'> - earlier versions of won't have it<o:p></o:p></span></p></div><div><p class=MsoNormal><span style='font-size:9.5pt'><o:p> </o:p></span></p></div><div><p class=MsoNormal><span style='font-size:9.5pt'>The former is a bad sign for a standard library and the latter is inherent to any new feature. Whether it is a policy or not to not add new features to distutils it is clear that a code base that does not evolve is dead.<o:p></o:p></span></p></div><div><p class=MsoNormal><span style='font-size:9.5pt'><o:p> </o:p></span></p></div><div><p class=MsoNormal><span style='font-size:9.5pt'>How about, instead, we continue improving it?<o:p></o:p></span></p></div></div><div><p class=MsoNormal><span style='font-size:9.5pt'><o:p> </o:p></span></p></div><div><p class=MsoNormal><span style='font-size:9.5pt'>Sylvain<o:p></o:p></span></p></div><div><p class=MsoNormal><o:p> </o:p></p></div></div></div></div></body></html>