[Distutils] Distribute and setuptools: what are the differences

[Michael Whapples]

On 13/10/09 13:14, Lennart Regebro wrote:
> 2009/10/13 Michael Whapples<mwhapples at aim.com>:
>    
>> As it seems that setuptools is not "dead" just possibly a bit slow at being
>> updated, could I ask what are the aims of the various projects setuptools
>> and distribute (please try and keep this information restricted to your
>> project and what it aims to do)?
>>      
> Distribute is created as a response to setuptools not getting the
> maintenance it deserves. It provides various bugfixes that has been
> known in setuptools for a long time but not solved. It also nowadays
> provides Python 3 support.
> Thanks for that, now it would be nice to hear from P.J. Eby on what setuptools aims to do and why distribute needed to be a fork rather than people added to the development team (what was it in the distribute's teams view that made them unacceptable for setuptools).
>    

>> I have to say from my view (as a developer of my own packages only using
>> setuptools/distribute to help package my packages) that it currently looks a
>> horrible mess, distribute tries to replace setuptools and does it in such a
>> way that any package which specifically wants setuptools has to use
>> distribute if another package wants it
>>      
> Distribute is a fork and a complete replacement of setuptools. Hence
> you can only have one installed in each environment at once. Yes it's
> a mess.
> May be there's certain reasons why setuptools and distribute couldn't be designed to coexist on a system (eg. may be its something to do with how they manage the package environment and include packages in eggs), but it would be nice for them to coexist. I am looking at cython/pyrex here. As I understand it cython forked from pyrex and aims to add extra features (eg. cython gives python3 support, cython has some extra ways of specifying for loops, etc), but as I understand it there is no packaging conflict between cython and pyrex and so both may be installed at the same time and not interfere with the other.
>    

> There really is not many reasons for any package to require distribute
> over setuptools. It's not a package choice, it's a user-choice.
> I sort of understand that but not fully. A package may need to specify distribute if it wants to be python3 compatible. The only way I can get what you say to work in my mind is not to use the automatic install of setuptools/distribute (IE. not to use distribute_setup.py or ez_setup.py in my setup.py script, I mean those lines:
from ex_setup import use_setuptools
use_setuptools()
> ). Are you saying/would you advise not to do this automatic install of setuptools/distribute?
>    

>> create my own custom code to give the features I currently really use from
>> setuptools/distribute until this "mess" has been cleaned up.
>>      
>    
>> I know this
>> idea of going a custom route doesn't really help things
>>      
> If it helps you, it helps.
> I was more meaning it doesn't help the python community, it doesn't help solve this mess. Also in a way it doesn't help me as much as I might like as it will take some of my time, time which may be better spent on the package I am developing (the work I may have specific skills in).
>    

Anyway I will have to just consider what direction would be most 
productive for my packages, having seen some of the recent messages I am 
quite strongly of the view let a new default (although setuptools has 
always been a third party package, it was a fairly obvious and fairly 
popular choice in the past, so as good as default) win out.

One final thing, in a different thread 
http://mail.python.org/pipermail/distutils-sig/2009-October/013845.html, 
it was said "What would newcomers think", well I am not new to python 
but only recently joined this list to ask about certain things with 
distribute and I am very much now thinking to avoid setuptools/distribute.

Michael Whapples