[Distutils] console scripts in distutils

[Tarek Ziadé]

On Sat, Feb 14, 2009 at 11:23 PM, Robert Kern <robert.kern at gmail.com> wrote:
> I have a couple of issues with this feature as implemented in setuptools. I
> think they should be addressed if the feature makes its way into the stdlib:
>
> 1. The pkg_resources import can make startup time quite large. For small
> command-line utilities like my grin tool and DivMod's PyFlakes, this can
> make them unusable. If you bring the feature into the stdlib, please pay
> attention to the overhead of locating the real script however you end up
> doing it.
>

Right, it getting very slow when you have a lot of sitedirs and .pth files,

I think an API in pkgutil should handle this part and focus on performances,

There's a patch I have started for this, that takes back pkg_resources
import principles
to look for a packages to return their metadata.

http://bugs.python.org/issue4908

> 2. In the generated script, please use "if __name__ == '__main__':" to block
> out the executable bits. Currently, multiprocessing does not work on Windows
> when the application is started by a console_script. Because Windows does
> not have a true fork, multiprocessing will start up clean Python
> subprocesses that import the __main__ of the parent process.


OK, I'll point this thread in the ticket

Tarek