Titus Brown wrote:

Hi folks,

I've been using distutils to package Python extensions for two packages, and I keep stumbling across two different issues with 'setup.py' usage.

The first is the behavior of 'clean': --help-commands says

clean clean up output of 'build' command

which (to me) meant that 'python setup.py clean' would remove my build directory. Instead, it means 'remove temporary files but leave stuff under build/lib'. Apparently 'clean --all' is what you need to use to get this behavior.

I'd suggest changing the --help-commands string to say

clean clean up temporary files from 'build' command

or some such. Alternatively, make '--all' the default behavior, and have '--temp-only' retain lib.* files.

+1 on the help string change. +0 on making --all the default.

(My expected behavior of 'clean' comes from C Makefiles, where 'clean' means 'remove all object files and force recompilation.)

--

The second issue is with the default --help behavior. I find that 'python setup.py --help' returns information that's not very useful to package *installers*, who usually only care about 'build' and 'install'. I'd strongly recommend having '--help' return more up-front information about build, install, and clean. Perhaps something like

""" Commonly-used commands: (see --help-commands for more information)

build build everything needed to install install install everything from build directory clean clean up output of 'build' command """

in front of the current output.

I'd suggest adding a few common examples to the --help output.

Thanks for bearing with my whining ;). If a set of changes can be agreed upon, I'd be happy to make the changes & submit patches.

Please post the patches to SourceForge.

Thanks,