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

[P.J. Eby]

At 01:31 PM 10/13/2009 -0400, Tres Seaver wrote:
>Why?

Because the user might have, say, setuptools 0.6c8, and the package 
relies on a bugfix in 0.6c9.  Also, at some point, there will be an 
0.7a1, with new features that some people might actually want to use.

(Some projects also actually use setuptools or easy_install at 
runtime, not just pkg_resources; e.g. buildout, pip, etc.)


>   Nobody will check / enforce / understand what 'install_requires'
>even means except setuptools / distribute.

Nobody except system packagers, who would otherwise have to troll the 
source for pkg_resources imports and such.  (Even then, a project 
could declare entry points in its setup.py that will get called by 
some other project, without ever directly using a pkg_resources or 
setuptools API.)