[Distutils] Improving distutils vs redesigning it (was people want CPAN)

[David Cournapeau]

Glyph Lefkowitz wrote:
> There are probably a dozen other ways that you *could* work on distutils and benefit more immediately from your efforts than the next Python release.  To think otherwise is a simply a failure of imagination.  Now, if you think it's *too hard* to do that, it might be interesting to hear why you think that, and what exactly the effort would be; a nebulous assertion that it's just too hard and we should throw our hands up (while I can definitely understand the impulse to make such an assertion) serves only to discourage everyone.
>   

I am trying to understand what is 'nebulous' about our claims. We have
given plenty of hard and concrete examples of things which are
problematic in distutils. The major progress in our build issues have
been achieved by dropping distutils. Up to now, the only people who have
claimed that distutils can solve our problems are the people who are not
involved at all with our projects, and the people who claim distutils
cannot solve our problems are the people involved with it. That's odd to
say the least.

Now, I am ready to accept that we are missing the big picture and the
rest  of the community knows more about it. But I certainly have not
seen strong arguments to believe it so far.

cheers,

David