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

[Robert Kern]

Lennart Regebro wrote:
> 2009/11/12 David Cournapeau <david at ar.media.kyoto-u.ac.jp>:
>> 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.
> 
> Look, there is only one way this argument can be solved, and that is
> by building something better than distutils. Honestly. Now, I'm sure
> as heck not going to spend time on that, and Tarek don't think it's a
> good idea, so it's up to you guys.

I think you're missing the point of our statements. We're not asking you to work 
or not work on anything. Guido asked, in response to a comment from our 
community: "Is the work on distutils-sig going to be enough?" And our answer is 
that no, it's probably not. It's not addressing our most significant problems. 
David's work, e.g. on numscons, is helping, but it is still constrained by the 
requirement of working within distutils' framework.

> Bitching that distutils needs to be scratched and rewritten is not
> going to help. You need to DO it.

Pardon us for sincerely answering the questions asked of us.

-- 
Robert Kern

"I have come to believe that the whole world is an enigma, a harmless enigma
  that is made terrible by our own mad attempt to interpret it as though it had
  an underlying truth."
   -- Umberto Eco