[Distutils] Questions about distutils strategy

[Guido van Rossum]

Greg Ward:
> The whole point of Distutils is to allow Joe Unix Geek to develop module
> distributions that will build and install painlessly on non-Unix
> systems, *and* Jane Windows Weenie to develop module distributions that
> will build and install painlessly on non-Windows systems.  If Jane is
> writing Windows-only extensions, then nobody's forcing her to use
> Distutils and maintain a setup script (although it would be nice).
> Ditto for Joe writing Unix-only extensions.
> 
> That means that Unix geeks can't use makefiles to distribute their
> Python modules, and it means that Windows weenies can't use Microsoft's
> project files to distribute their Python modules.  The bad news is that
> if you really really want to use the local convention for automated
> building (both of which have advantages), you have to maintain a
> separate setup.py script.  The good news is that setup.py is portable
> and written in a real programming language.

Good summary of the distutil charter.  I would add a third objective:
*users* on all platforms are tired of having to understand the
intricate details of building and installing Python modules, and want
module distributions that "just work".  This includes platform
specific distributions.

--Guido van Rossum (home page: http://www.python.org/~guido/)