[Distutils] distutils extension and setuptools

[Samuel Dufour]

Hi,

We currently develop a software to integrate packages (C++/Python) in
plant modeling. We use SCons to build C++ library and Boost.Python to
create the wrappers. We have extended distutils to call scons rather
than distutils.build_ext. Thus, we distribute packages with the
distutils frontend (sdist, bdist_*).

All python modules are installed in a common namespace (a meta-package).
All libraries and data (shared libraries, headers, tests,...) are
installed in a common directory on the system which is 
external to the python installation (e.g. /usr/local).

We would like to use setuptools functionalities to manage dependencies
between packages. Is it possible to extend setuptools as we extend
distutils to deals correctly with external data ?

Thanks.

Samuel


N.B.:

Our own distutils extension (OpenAlea.DistX) provides the following
subcommands:
 - build_scons : call scons with subprocess during the build process.
 - build_namespace : create meta packages (just a directory and a
__init__.py).
 - install_external_data : copy some data in a custom place. We adapt
sdist and bdist_* commands to manage this kind of data. It is like the
'data_file' field, but add recursive copy and the detection of base
destination directory depending of the system configuration.
 - set_env_var : set windows environment variable to discover shared
libs at runtime.

OpenAlea.DistX is available on
http://gforge.inria.fr/frs/?group_id=79&release_id=782