[Distutils] Alternate static metadata PEP submission...

[Floris Bruynooghe]

On Tue, Oct 13, 2009 at 02:18:11AM -0400, David Lyon wrote:
> This PEP proposes a change to the way that applications
> and libraries are installed in python, by using a new
> file called setup.info rather than setup.py. To hold 
> installation information.

This seems to propose a whole build system, while PEP390 only aims for
static metadata.  Not restricting it to static metadata makes the
domain a lot wider and complicated as shown by countless previous
discussions on this list (several of these things have been outlined
before).  Since the problem domain is so huge it will take a very long
time to come up with a stable version that addresses all issues
adequately, something which this PEP sidesteps solving the problem it
targets in a sensible and contained way.

It certainly is a laudable goal to come up with such a build system
but I don't think it can be seen as *instead of* the metatdata PEP.
IMHO such a system should be using the static metadata from whatever
PEP 390 will become.


Regards
Floris