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

[Robert Kern]

Glyph Lefkowitz wrote:

>> In software, design decisions early on affect how much change the software can tolerate (which is why we are told to "design for change").
> 
> Who's "we", kimosabe? 

It pops up in the Design Patterns literature. I didn't make this up. :-)

http://www.google.com/search?q=%22design+for+change%22+%22design+patterns%22

 > In fact, I think that distutils is over-designed for change.  It has
 > altogether too many different extension mechanisms, which often interfere with
 > each other: subclassing, configuration files, including random bits of code in
 > setup.py.  And then of course there's the monkey-patching for the cases that
 > weren't covered :).

That's not the kind of change I'm talking about. I'm talking about the evolution 
of distutils itself, not the configuration and extension of distutils when it is 
used. Those particular mechanisms are the antithesis of designing for change 
because their use hampers the change of distutils itself.

-- 
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