[Distutils] idea - keeping package index code (in pip, distribute) separate

[P.J. Eby]

At 10:56 AM 7/18/2009 -0700, Sridhar Ratnakumar wrote:
>Both easy_install and pip uses similar method to find download URLs for
>packages. They are not very unreliable - see the new issues in Distribute
>tracker:
>
>   http://bitbucket.org/tarek/distribute/issues/?status=new&reported_by=srid
>
>Hence I suggest that we create a separate project containing just this
>indexing code .. and let Distribute and pip use it via install_requires.
>Thoughts?

In order for install_requires to work, you need something like 
easy_install in the first place...  and a way to bootstrap it.

You could perhaps take setuptools.package_index or something like it, 
bundle it with pkg_resources, and have a nice little core support for 
dependency handling, downloading, and local package queries.  Then, 
you could put it in the stdlib... kind of like I proposed in PEP 365.  ;-)

Alternately, you need a replacement for ez_setup.py that's a 
stripped-down cross between pkg_resources and 
setuptools.package_index, or that can at least *download* that 
combination for you and then run other stuff.