Anthony Baxter wrote:
I'm not sure how people would prefer this be handled. I don't think we need to have a PEP for it - I don't see PEPs for ctypes, elementtree, pysqlite or cProfile, either.
That's because they're all trivial building blocks, not all-consuming world views. Any programmer who's ever used a C compiler/linker, xml loader, or embedded database will understand how to use them, and what they do, right from the start. There's not a trace of "you don't need to under- stand this" or "won't anybody think of the newbies!" in any of them. They're also all relatively close to the simplest thing that could possibly work. setuptools, in contrast, appears to be an overengineered kitchen sink with tons of magic in-phillips-head-only features, all of which may have unforseen effects on all parts of your Python installation. I've skimmed the PEAK documentation, and all I find is bullet-point feature lists and endless lists of configuration options. It's like reading Microsoft documentation. </F>