[Distutils] RFC: Updating PEP 345

[zooko]

On Apr 9, 2009, at 16:40 PM, Tres Seaver wrote:

> Jim Fulton wrote:
>> On Apr 9, 2009, at 12:55 PM, Tres Seaver wrote:
>>> setuptools can treat 'install_requires' as an undeprecated alias  
>>> for 'requires_dist'.
>>
>> What is the rational for this?  I'd strongly prefer the "requires"  
>> argument name to be compatible with setuptools.  Otherwise, I  
>> think we'll introduce needless confusion.
>
> I'm aiming for self-consistency within the 'PKG-INFO' field names:


The easier we can make it for The New Distutils to be compatible with  
existing and widely used [1] setuptools and easy_install the better.   
To the extent that you can suffer a little bit of ugliness or  
variation in the New Distutils in order to ease compatibility, I  
would be very grateful if you would do so.

For example, what if I want to run "easy_install http://example.com/ 
foo.tar.gz", where foo is packaged with the New Distutils?  This  
currently works with the Old Distutils, but foo is unable to declare  
its dependencies on the "bar" distribution using the Old Distutils.   
It also currently works if foo was packaged with setuptools. The  
biggest (to my mind) single improvement in the New Distutils is that  
if foo is packaged with the New Distutils then foo is able to declare  
its dependency on "bar".  Would it be nice if it spelled it in a way  
that was intelligible to the current crop widely-deployed tools?

It will be easier for people to make things like that work if you  
don't change the names of things unnecessarily.

Regards,

Zooko

[1] http://tarekziade.wordpress.com/2009/03/26/packaging-survey-first- 
results