At 10:52 AM 10/22/2006, Jim Fulton wrote:
I'd like to call "Ya aint gonna need it" on the extras feature of setuptools.
As far as I can tell, extras are just a way to avoid fine-grained packages. Is this benefit worth the complexity? I don't think so. It violates "There's Only One Way To Do It" and increases the complexity of setuptools.
Setuptools is wonderful but it is complex. I think it would be helpful to make it simpler and I really don't see a need for extras.
I think a similar argument could be made against the tests_require feature. (In the presence of the extras feature, it's puzzling that this isn't handled as an extra.)
tests_require and setup_requires don't get installed; extras are. Also, the mechanism involved is different; you have to have a valid distribution object in order to reference its extras, and when tests_require is being processed, you may not have that yet. (I don't know without looking at the code, and I'm on the road right now.) Anyway, I don't see tests_require as having any relationship to extras; many packages don't have installable tests, for example.