[Distutils] Package Meta-information Patch

[Fred L. Drake, Jr.]

Michael Muller writes:
 > itself is readable), and because it was the only format that I was
 > _absolutely certain_ would be available on every platform that
 > would be using distutils.

  No, it's fair to assume that the entire standard library is
available.  That makes available ConfigParser, rfc822, shlib, and
xmllib.  Writing a parser *is* an option, because it can be
incorporated into distutils, but I don't see any need to do so with so 
many already-debugged modules available.

 > Also, there's the fact that with Python code, the interpreter is
 > written in C - it will run significantly faster than any code that
 > could be written in Python.

  And the first malevolent packager to add a "while 1" loop to his
package metadata breaks the whole system.
  If performance is really an issue, C and Java implementations can be 
built as needed.


  -Fred

--
Fred L. Drake, Jr.	  <fdrake at acm.org>
Corporation for National Research Initiatives