[Distutils] Package install failures in 2.6.3 - setuptools vs Distribute

[Lennart Regebro]

2009/10/5 Jeff Rush <jeff at taupro.com>:
> Very unfortunate, as in, it should NOT have happened.  And *especially*
> without any announcement on python.org or mention on the
> python-committers list of something this major.

Well "this major"... It's a bug fix that breaks a setuptools monkey-patch.
But yes, it was discovered before release, and maybe it should have
been discussed, I'm not on python-dev anymore.

> and even hints of
> under-the-table intentionality in forcing the community to abandon use
> of setuptools.

There are no such hints anywhere.

>  Distribute should win because of superior technology not
> forced migration.

That makes no sense. You move to distribute because you have to,
because setuptools is buggy and not updated.  Until people encounter
bugs in setuptools, or need Python 3 support, they are not likely to
move to Distribute. There is no other reason than forced migration.

Also, there is no "win" or "lose". This is not a competition.

> Distribute is very new and there are many folk who will not be adopting
> it until it has been out for quite some time.

Nobody will adopt it until they are forced to. This unfortunate bug
means people are forced to quicker than expected. I don't think that's
an actual problem.

> It is a fact of the
> conservative nature of some development teams.

Conservative development teams are not likely to either use Subversion
1.6 or Python 2.6.3, so they are not affected by any of the major
setuptools problems. I would have expected people starting to get
forced to Distribute when major distros where shipping with subversion
1.6. Now it's going to be when they ship with Python 2.6.3 instead.

I fail to see how this is a big disaster in any way. Yes, it's not
perfect, and yeah, maybe there should have been big warning signs
somewhere. But we can NOT leave bugs in Python just because setuptools
isn't getting updated. Setuptools has already been a break on Python 3
development, are we gonna lets it be a break on Python 2 bugfixes too?

-- 
Lennart Regebro: Python, Zope, Plone, Grok
http://regebro.wordpress.com/
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