[Distutils] why would you ever need to specify setuptools as a dependency?

[Chris Withers]

Hanno Schlichting wrote:
> I assume most packages Reinout uses (like all zope.* packages) use
> namespace packages. So they actually do depend during runtime on the
> pkg_resources module, which happens to be available from either the
> distribute  or setuptools distribution. So one of them should be
> specified in install_requires.

You're missing my point.

If you're using buildout, you automatically have setuptools available.

If you're using easy_install, you automatically have setuptools available.

So, the only case we can even consider is when you're installing a 
setuptools-based package with:

python setup.py install

In this case, which I suspect is extremely rare anyway, you'll need to 
have setuptools installed already.

So, in *any* of these cases, specifying setuptools as a requirement 
seems like a total waste of time...

Now, what case have I missed? ;-)

Chris

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