[Distutils] Alternate static metadata PEP submission...

[David Cournapeau]

David Lyon wrote:
> I don't have a way of doing that right now - and am not aware of
> practical examples that might require it.
>
> Anything that can't be handled with the above will have to go into
> a pre-install or post-install script and be coded with traditional
> python coding.
>   

Let's take a common case: using cython/pyrex to accelerate some code,
but you still want people to be able to use your package without a C
compiler (bzr, cython are examples of such packages).

If we had a way to define variables as in .cabal files, this could be
used to control the build from 'outside'. I am not sure I understand
your goal of a new format if you only want to handle common cases which
are already handled in distutils. For me, the goal of having static
metadata should be easier interoperation between different tools, and as
such the format should be rich enough to describe entirely common cases.
You could then have a distutils2-debianize tool which would read this
file and produce a .deb, another tool for eggs, windows installers,
etc... or you could use the parsed file description to control the build
from a real build tool system like waf or scons. That's the kind of
things I want to be able to do and are so painful right now with distutils.

David