I've just read through the Distribute doc for the first time and I have a few comments. First, I just want to say that the state of python packaging is a sad morass. It's not easy for someone to sort out distutils/setuptools/distribute to figure out how to get a package built and released on pypi. Distutils is official and available, but the documentation is only slightly relevant with much time and space given to features that aren't clear, aren't relevant, or don't solve today's problems. Setuptools is messy, confusing, ill documented, and difficult to use. The Distribute documentation helps in this considerably but it could be better. For instance... I wish that the Distribute documentation didn't refer to itself as "setuptools". This is confusing. From where I'm sitting, Distribute is a fork. It may have started life once upon a time in a distant past that I don't care about as a fork of setuptools but as of today, it's a separate package which just happens to provide a superset of the setuptools features along with a setuptools compatible replacement interface. To say that one can use a Distribute script to install "setuptools" is a misnomer. It suggests that the original setuptools is being installed rather than installing Distribute, (which just happens to provide functional replacements for setuptools). That's not what I want. I want Distribute and Distribute alone. I'm willing to go to some effort to make sure that people who use my package never need to know about, read about, or even think about setuptools. Toward that end, I wish that the documentation would explain how to import Distribute specifically, in a non-setuptools compatible way. I don't need or want a setuptools compatible replacement. I have a new package and I'm completely willing to make my package wholly dependent on Distribute rather than setuptools. Even attempting to support setuptools at this point in history seems like a mistake to me. If I'm going to include distribute_setup.py in my package, then it seems to me that I'm already committed to Distribute, not setuptools. Leaving the illusion that an installer might be able to make setuptools work for my package seems misguided. I'd like to eliminate that thought. The section on "What Your Users Should Know" sounds like the sort of information which has traditionally been released in an INSTALL file with GNU software. Is there a reusable, sample template which explains this information in a package agnostic sort of way that I can simply include in my package? Thanks for reading. --rich <http://packages.python.org/distribute/setuptools.html#id25>
Hello, have you just seen distribute guide - which is just an update fork of the original setuptools distribution - or did you check out this as well?: http://guide.python-distribute.org/ Surely the setuptools/distribute fork has been painful so far, but it's done. You could check out distutils2 as well. -- Alan Franzoni -- contact me at public@[mysurname].eu
On 1/4/11 06:40 , Alan Franzoni wrote:
Hello, have you just seen distribute guide - which is just an update fork of the original setuptools distribution - or did you check out this as well?:
http://guide.python-distribute.org/
Surely the setuptools/distribute fork has been painful so far, but it's done. You could check out distutils2 as well Um... neither, I don't think.
I was commenting on this one: http://packages.python.org/distribute The only "doc" I've seen for setuptools was pretty bad. I don't find a copy of it now, though. And I haven't yet seen a piece of overall documentation. With at least three major efforts being involved, there really needs to be an overview, perhaps a HOWTO on python packaging. Yes, I understand that it's politically charged, but right now it's pretty daunting. --rich
On Tue, Jan 4, 2011 at 6:37 PM, K. Richard Pixley <rich@noir.com> wrote:
Look at that. You'll find it useful, even though it's still a work in progress.
And I haven't yet seen a piece of overall documentation. With at least three major efforts being involved, there really needs to be an overview, perhaps a HOWTO on python packaging. Yes, I understand that it's politically charged, but right now it's pretty daunting.
You're right that sometimes python-related docs and best practices can't be found easily, but work on that direction is being done. Feel free to ask more questions if you need to. -- Alan Franzoni -- contact me at public@[mysurname].eu
On Wed, Dec 29, 2010 at 8:42 PM, K. Richard Pixley <rich@noir.com> wrote:
I've just read through the Distribute doc for the first time and I have a few comments.
First, I just want to say that the state of python packaging is a sad morass. It's not easy for someone to sort out distutils/setuptools/distribute to figure out how to get a package built and released on pypi. Distutils is official and available, but the documentation is only slightly relevant with much time and space given to features that aren't clear, aren't relevant, or don't solve today's problems. Setuptools is messy, confusing, ill documented, and difficult to use. The Distribute documentation helps in this considerably but it could be better.
The Distribute documentation is also taken from Setuptools, and evolved a bit. But it still has probably some places that were not updated.
From a user point of view the major differences on the two projects are:
1. if Setuptools has a bug, it can be fixed in Distribute. 2. Distribute provides py3k compat and other features we needed, like the easy_install --user option etc. 3. Distribute wants to provide a bridge for the upcoming Distutils2 So it's more a matter of "what installer do you need/want to install ?" -- on Ubuntu, Fedora, Gentoo and some other distros, Setuptools was replaced by Distribute and this is transparent for you. On other systems you can chose the one you want. Note that the Distribute project is currently staled because most people that work in it are now focusing on Distutils2. But if we hit major bugs in Setuptools we will do new releases of Distribute. And it welcomes contributions but lacks of reviewers + comitters right now. It's easy to become one though, because the philosophy is to have more people involved and to release it often. By the way ,if someone want to become the Distribute maintainer I'd be happy to pass it over while focusing on Distutils2. The Distutils2 project is actively developed and will be pushed back in the stdlib sometimes after 3.2 final is out.
The section on "What Your Users Should Know" sounds like the sort of information which has traditionally been released in an INSTALL file with GNU software. Is there a reusable, sample template which explains this information in a package agnostic sort of way that I can simply include in my package?
No but the Guide pointed by Alan is where we wanted to provide this kind of information. Tarek -- Tarek Ziadé | http://ziade.org
participants (3)
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Alan Franzoni -
K. Richard Pixley -
Tarek Ziadé