[Distutils] Proposal for Distribute 0.7

[P.J. Eby]

At 02:38 PM 10/15/2009 -0400, ssteinerX at gmail.com wrote:
>>  that there are other people on the Distribute team who I'd
>>seriously consider as committers on setuptools or even as a chief
>>maintainer of the setuptools 0.6 line (if not more).
>>...asked me who those team members are
>
>I'm asking.  Who are they and, if you are willing to give them access,
>have you offered it and they've declined, or you were waiting
>until...what?   You had Tarek's acknowledgement or permission?

I am not trying to poach anyone or stir up trouble, which is why I've 
taken a very passive public stance on the issue -- although it has 
included me naming names in certain venues, including here.

However, I *am* in private contact with more than one member of the 
Distribute team, each of whom first contacted me.

In order to avoid creating any further drama here or in the 
Distribute team, I will leave it up  to them to make any public 
statements, when/if they choose to confer with their colleagues on 
the matter.  (I would prefer, of course, a joint statement at the 
appropriate time.)

I wish that such complications weren't necessary.  If cooler heads 
had prevailed in July, this could have and likely would have been 
resolved back then.


>We, regular Python users, have been asking for you to let someone help
>with setuptools for years since you obviously have other priorities
>and the various issues in setuptools have affected many of us in
>various ways.

The only reason I've done an 0.6c10 is because of a policy-breaking 
change to Python that breaks setuptools users, and that can't be 
worked around with configuration, command-line options, or other 
tweaking of the runtime environment -- as was able to be done with 
approximately 9 out of 10 of the setuptools bugs in the tracker.

If it weren't for that, I'd have been more-or-less happy to let 
Distribute become the quasi-official replacement for setuptools 0.6, 
despite my annoyance at some of the public comments made by its 
promoter(s) prior to the 2.6.3 issue.

Indeed, as previously stated, I even tried to arrange a handoff of 
0.6, wherein the changes made in Distribute would've been released as 
0.6c10 or 0.6final back in July...  and public talks broke down due 
to certain persons' flaming and posturing.

That's one reason I'm only doing off-list talks now -- less chance of 
random jerks inserting themselves into the middle of the discussion, 
making me think they're part of Distribute and that their comments 
reflect Distribute policy (as also happened back in July).  Also, no 
need for persons on either side to put up any posture or spin, when 
there's no audience to play to.


>Are you really willing to let anyone help?  Really?

Indeed.  There's a list, and some of them obviously have time to work 
on Distribute, so it's not a matter of me only picking people who 
don't have any time, as Tarek and others have more than once accused me of.


>Do it, then,

Discussions are ongoing.

Also, I've made it pretty plain for a long time that if Ian Bicking 
or Jim Fulton were ever willing to take it over, I'd hand it *all* 
over -- 0.7 as well as 0.6 -- and happily retire from the 
distribution tools business.  I trust their vision as architects, and 
their track record of supporting their users IMO speaks for 
itself.  Both are past contributors of non-trivial features to 
setuptools, as well as accomplished installation tool developers in 
their own right.  It would be a joy and an honor to turn the keys 
over to either one of them, either as an individual or as the leader 
of a new team.  (I would love to see some of pip and buildout's 
features integrated in setuptools 0.7, for example.)

(Ian, btw, already has PyPI maintainer rights to setuptools, and Jim 
already has commit rights to setuptools SVN... giving further lie to 
the idea that I'm not willing to give people access or let them help.)

That having been said, there are definitely other people I'd give 
varying degrees of access to, just not at the "here, take it, please, 
I want you to have it!" level I would grant to Ian or Jim.  ;-)