Re: [Distutils] What is the official position on distutils?
Hi Steve,
- I posted an on setuptools github https://github.com/pypa/
setuptools/issues/771 to ask the setuptools folks (and especially Jason)
whether they would want such a feature.
I still find it baffling that the preferred way to add distutils features
would be to monkey-patch it via setuptools first and then to add it into
distutils later, while my proposed approach was to add it to distutils and
monkey patch for earlier versions of python.
- Regarding the policy that you just nominated, does this apply to things
that have been in pip for a long time? In the initial email that triggered
this discussion, it was also question of adding the
`pip.location.distutils_scheme`
convenience function to distutils itself. Cf
https://bugs.python.org/issue26955 and pip's implementation at
https://github.com/pypa/pip/blob/281eb61b09d87765d7c2b92f6982b3fe76ccb0af/pi...
Indeed, the problem with certain distutils commands like `install_headers`
is that the only way to retrieve the directory where things were installed
is to instantiate a `distutils.dist.Distribution`
object, which is not trivial to do. pip's distutils_scheme convenience
function does it. This function is *about* distutils, and IMO should really
be *in* distutils.
Thanks,
Sylvain
On Sun, Sep 4, 2016 at 4:02 PM, Steve Dower
"add it to setuptools first, and then add things to distutils where we feel they're sufficiently stable to not need the benefit of the faster setuptools update cycle"
I nominate this as the official policy on API changes for distutils, with regular maintenance mode policies applying to anything else.
Top-posted from my Windows Phone ------------------------------ From: Nick Coghlan
Sent: 9/4/2016 2:19 To: Sylvain Corlay Cc: distutils sig Subject: Re: [Distutils] What is the official position on distutils? On 4 September 2016 at 06:44, Sylvain Corlay
wrote: Hi Brett,
On Sat, Sep 3, 2016 at 8:05 PM, Brett Cannon
wrote: If Jason is up for the responsibility that seems like a reasonable approach to take. It also helps test out features in setuptools first
before
upstreaming it.
How do you see `has_flag` get into setuptools? By monkey-patching distutils' ccompiler to have it aside of `has_function` when setuptools is imported?
I find really weird the idea of adding this in a convoluted fashion instead of allowing incremental improvement of distutils.
The change to distutils would still be a plain patch to distutils, it would just be accepted at the API design level in setuptools first.
The problem you're running into right now isn't a technical one - it's that there isn't anyone that currently feels like they have sufficient design authority over the distutils API to accept your proposal, hence Brett starting this thread to address that underlying recurring question, rather than the specifics of your change.
Jason *definitely* has that design authority over setuptools though, and will be tasked with making any API additions available on older versions of Python via setuptools regardless of what policy we adopt for distutils maintenance, so if he's amenable to the idea, it makes sense to me to invert the order we ask those questions: add it to setuptools first, and then add things to distutils where we feel they're sufficiently stable to not need the benefit of the faster setuptools update cycle.
Cheers, Nick.
-- Nick Coghlan | ncoghlan@gmail.com | Brisbane, Australia _______________________________________________ Distutils-SIG maillist - Distutils-SIG@python.org https://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/distutils-sig
On 5 September 2016 at 00:27, Sylvain Corlay
Hi Steve,
- I posted an on setuptools github https://github.com/pypa/setuptools/issues/771 to ask the setuptools folks (and especially Jason) whether they would want such a feature.
I still find it baffling that the preferred way to add distutils features would be to monkey-patch it via setuptools first and then to add it into distutils later, while my proposed approach was to add it to distutils and monkey patch for earlier versions of python.
Imagine a world where distutils wasn't rife with global state, and hence setuptools didn't need to monkeypatch it, and the approach seems more logical (e.g. this is roughly the way I've worked for larger contextlib changes - the ContextStack precursor to ExitStack only exists in contextlib2, since I didn't push that API to the stdlib until I was happy with both the design and the name).
- Regarding the policy that you just nominated, does this apply to things that have been in pip for a long time? In the initial email that triggered this discussion, it was also question of adding the `pip.location.distutils_scheme` convenience function to distutils itself. Cf https://bugs.python.org/issue26955 and pip's implementation at https://github.com/pypa/pip/blob/281eb61b09d87765d7c2b92f6982b3fe76ccb0af/pi...
Indeed, the problem with certain distutils commands like `install_headers` is that the only way to retrieve the directory where things were installed is to instantiate a `distutils.dist.Distribution` object, which is not trivial to do. pip's distutils_scheme convenience function does it. This function is *about* distutils, and IMO should really be *in* distutils.
Should it be in distutils, or should it be in the version independent "packaging" helper library that pip uses? It's important to note that one of our key goals in PyPA is to get to a point where the API of a developer's publishing toolchain of choice only depends on the *version of the publishing tools* they're using, and not on the specific version of Python (as long as they're using a supported version). Encouraging the expansion and increased use of the distutils API runs counter to that goal in most cases (since it encourages writing publication and distribution code that will only work with newer versions of Python), but may sometimes make sense if it's info that really is CPython centric, or if it's a feature primarily aimed at tightly controlled environments that can aggressively drop support for older versions. Cheers, Nick. -- Nick Coghlan | ncoghlan@gmail.com | Brisbane, Australia
participants (2)
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Nick Coghlan
-
Sylvain Corlay