I'd like to check in the following patch; it causes unknown keywords in the setup() invocation to trigger a warning instead of an exception. This will make it possible to add more metadata arguments to setup() in future versions while still letting packages be installed with Distutils versions lacking the added arguments. Any objections? Should it be backported to Python 2.2? --amk Index: dist.py =================================================================== RCS file: /cvsroot/python/python/dist/src/Lib/distutils/dist.py,v retrieving revision 1.56 diff -u -u -r1.56 dist.py --- dist.py 11 Sep 2002 16:31:52 -0000 1.56 +++ dist.py 31 Oct 2002 00:24:55 -0000 @@ -9,7 +9,7 @@ __revision__ = "$Id: dist.py,v 1.56 2002/09/11 16:31:52 jhylton Exp $" -import sys, os, string, re +import sys, os, string, re, warnings from types import * from copy import copy from distutils.errors import * @@ -206,8 +206,7 @@ elif hasattr(self, key): setattr(self, key, val) else: - raise DistutilsSetupError, \ - "invalid distribution option '%s'" % key + warnings.warn("Unknown distribution option: %r" % key) self.finalize_options()