[Distutils] Setuptools should not depend on setuptools.

[P.J. Eby]

At 10:14 PM 3/11/2009 +0100, Lennart Regebro wrote:
>On Wed, Mar 11, 2009 at 21:47, P.J. Eby <pje at telecommunity.com> wrote:
> > Why not just invoke:
> >
> >  python3 -m unittest somemodule.somesuite
> >
> > Then there are no dependencies on distutils or setuptools.
>
>Because it needs to run 2to3 on the code first.

That's what the build_py option (to run 2to3 on the copied .py files) 
would be for.


>Also, python3 setup.py install will fail, becuase the installation
>depends on setuptools, and then I need to do build_py_2to3 on the
>code, which isn't going to work if the install program depends on
>setuptools, as it hasn't been converted to Python3 yet.

I think we must be entirely misunderstanding each other here.  I 
don't see where the problem is, exactly.  Assuming that 2to3 can 
convert some version of 2.x-compatible setuptools to a valid 
3.x-compatible version, self-dependency would not be an 
issue.  Likewise, using 2.x to manage the process of converting and 
then invoking tests in 3.x on the converted version, doesn't seem 
like a problem to me either.  You just run separate interpreters for 
anything that needs 3.x to run, while leaving the primary build 
operations in 2.x.

If you're trying to say that you want a build process that can run 
without there being a 2.x interpreter present, but starts with the 
same source code base, I don't see how that's possible without having 
some sort of alternative setup3.py or other .py scripts present, to 
do the conversion.


>The alternative, which seems less likely, is to rewrite setuptools to
>run under Python 2.3, 2.4, 2.5, 2.6 and 3.0 without using 2to3. :-D
>
>Or of course, continue having a separate source distribution for
>Python 3 and a bit complicated development process, which is
>survivable, but I don't think it's a good long term strategy.

You can have a single source distribution, you'll just need a 
different way to access the 3.x stuff from the 2.x stuff, like a 
'setup3.py' or something.  (This might be a useful idea in general, 
not just for setuptools.)