On 17/03/2008, "Martin v. Löwis"
Personally, I have no problem per se with including setuptools in the stdlib. Maybe that means I miss the subtle benefit of this approach...
Did you review setuptools and can vouch that it is written cleanly, follows the coding style, has correct documentation, and so on?
No, I concede that when I say "I have no problem" with including setuptools, I'm assuming that someone does that review - and there's no reason to assume that anyone will do that (that's why I say "I have no problem with" rather than "I want"). But I don't see any practical difference with including setuptools and including a module that installs setuptools. Would you be happy with the standard library including a module whose sole function was to install a package that you weren't happy to include directly in the standard library? I wouldn't, personally. Paul