[Python-Dev] Which version of distutils to ship with Python 2.5?

[M.-A. Lemburg]

Martin v. Löwis wrote:
> Anthony Baxter schrieb:
>>> In any case, I bumped the version number to 2.5, according to the
>>> policy discussed in
>>>
>> Could this not simply use the Python version number directly, instead?
> 
> See the prior discussion at
> 
> http://mail.python.org/pipermail/distutils-sig/2005-January/004366.html
> 
> Some people still believe (at least, believed in January 2005), that
> distutils is developed independently of Python, and thus deserves
> its own version number.

They still do.

Even if distutils is part of the stdlib, it is
a software package that's intended to be used for more than just
the latest Python release.

The fact that were no official separate distutils releases
shouldn't be regarded as meaning that there's no interest
in using distutils with older Python versions.

> Of course, Andrew Kuchling officially declared in r1982 of pep 291
> that there won't be any further stand-alone distutils releases,
> and therefore, backwards compatibility with 2.1 is not necessary
> anymore.

AFAIK, there was no public discussion about this on the
distutils SIG list. While I don't think that Python 2.1
compatibility is still a requirement, Python 2.3 compatibility
should be maintained in order to make SVN distutils work
with all versions of Python since 2.3.

distutils should then be added back to PEP 291.

> So I changed distutils.__version__ again, to be derived from
> sys.version_info.

See the discussion on the checkins list for why this will
only cause problems instead of fixing any.

http://mail.python.org/pipermail/python-checkins/2006-July/055139.html

> I left the numerous comments still in distutils that compatibility
> with 2.1 is desired. We should remove these after 2.5 is released
> (or perhaps even before that).

Please don't. Instead we should have a discussion about this
whole issue on the distutils list and then decide.

-- 
Marc-Andre Lemburg
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