[Distutils] Some negative press for easy_install

[Phillip J. Eby]

At 11:10 AM 2/9/2006 -0500, Kevin Dangoor wrote:
>On 2/9/06, Ben Bangert <ben at groovie.org> wrote:
> > It's mainly because Routes is relied on by quite a few other
> > setuptools-enabled packages, so being able to easy install it was
> > necessary. I didn't have a non-setuptools build mainly because I
> > couldn't see how to setup a setup.py file in such a way that I could
> > make both versions at once. I'm assuming I'd need two setup.py's and
> > to swap them in the build depending on if it was a setuptools build
> > or not.
>
>Could you do something like this:
>
>try:
>     from setuptools import setup
>except ImportError:
>     from distutils.core import setup
>
>On your system, you'd then be able to build eggs at will. Other people
>who download an sdist but don't have setuptools will just get normal
>sdist-like behavior.

Almost.  You'll have to use MANIFEST.in or they won't be able to do 
bdist_rpm or certain other commands from your sdist.  That is, you can't 
use setuptools' revision control features, since they won't have them 
available.

Aside from that minor point, this is the approach I'd recommend to authors 
who are only using setuptools in order to build eggs and to upload stuff to 
PyPI, and aren't pointing their users to the docs.  You will have to forego 
all of the normal conveniences of setuptools, however.

Personally, however, I think that the short statement somebody else posted 
about "hey, I use setuptools, and if you're installing anywhere besides 
your system's site-packages directory you should check out this link" (to 
the Custom Installation Locations doc) is more than sufficient.

I've been keeping setuptools in "alpha" mainly for API-change reasons, but 
it seems to me that the massive exposure to eggs given by TurboGears has 
shaken out all but the "new user hasn't read the doc and needs a custom 
install" problems.  What impressed me most about Joe's blog post is not his 
installation failed, but just how close he was to actual success without 
even reading the documentation.

So, as far as I'm concerned, as soon as it's at the point where he'd have 
succeeded in what he did, setuptools should qualify as beta quality.  And 
that's just a bit of spit-and-polish away.  So even though I'm not thrilled 
about the blog post, it's actually a pretty positive milestone in two ways:

1. It highlights how little there is left to go to get to a quality 
installation experience

2. It highlights how popular setuptools has already become.