"PFD" == Paul F Dubois <paul@pfdubois.com> writes:
PFD> The requirement of a version argument to the distutils command PFD> breaks Pyfort and many of my existing packages. These packages PFD> are not intended for use with the distribution commands and a PFD> package version number would be meaningless. PFD> I will make a new Pyfort that supplies a version number to the PFD> call it makes to setup. However, I think this change to PFD> distutils is a poor idea. If the version number would be PFD> required for the distribution commands, let *them* complain, PFD> perhaps by setting a default value of PFD> time.asctime(time.gmtime()) or something that the distribution PFD> commands could object to. PFD> I apologize if I missed an earlier discussion of this change PFD> that seems to be in 2.1b2 but not 2.1b1, as I am new to this PFD> list. I haven't read any discussion of distutils changes that was discussed on this list. It's a good question, though. Should distutils be allowed to change between beta releases in a way that breaks user code? There are two possibilities: 1. Guido has decided that distutils release cycles need not be related to Python release cycles. He has said as much for pydoc. If so, the timing of the change is just an unhappy coincidence. 2. Distutils is considered to be part of the standard library and should follow the same rules as the rest of the library. No new features after the first beta release, just bug fixes. And no incompatible changes without ample warning. I think that distutils is mature enough to follow the second set of rules -- and that the change should be reverted before the final release. Jeremy