[Distutils] Splitting metadata from setup.py in distutils..

[David Lyon]

On Thu, 13 Aug 2009 00:13:59 +0200, Tarek Ziadé <ziade.tarek at gmail.com>
wrote:

> I think things will look better the day we remove setup.py in favor of
> a static metadata file.

It's good to see that you have your progressive thinking hat on Tarek
but given the history that surrounds setup.py, I suggest that removing 
"setup.py" is "unrealistic". 

You're far better off to add the functionality so that setup.py can
pick up it's metadata from an external file at runtime.

For example, add the ability for setup.py to interact with a new
file called, say "setup.xml".

To use the metadata, we'd need a function to load the metadata. Which
shouldn't be so hard to do. Perphaps, self.loadmetadata()

Avoid the temptation to use a heavyweight xml processor.

Surely doing this cannot be that hard....? even I would volunteer
to help out with this. Tell me how?

David