[Distutils] Distutils and Distribute roadmap (and some words on Virtualenv, Pip)

[Chris Withers]

David Cournapeau wrote:
> Chris Withers wrote:
>> "even" seems to imply this is a basic requirement. I wonder how many
>> people are rolling out python apps on Win64? I'm certainly not...
> 
> Even was maybe a bit strong. Concerning win64, the first release of
> numpy we did for win64 has been downloaded 3000 times, 

By what? I'm always sceptical about the download figures on PyPI, and 
other places. I wonder how many bots are sucking down every .exe or .msi 
they can find to check for viruses or the like?

>>> I think it is also important to keep in mind that not everybody use the
>>> same workflow - I myself build a lot of non trivial python softwares on
>>> many platforms, and the whole virtualenv/buildout/pip workflows is very
>>> foreign to me, and do not fit at all how I want to build and deploy
>>> things. 
>> How do you build and deploy things?
> 
> To answer your question: I use distutils, scons, and native OS package
> tools. Sandboxing at build time is done through chrooting (and some
> hacked wine setup for windows).

You should probably look at buildout, you may find your like getting a 
lot easier. Yes, the docs suck. I even promised to do something about 
that back at PyCon, sadly time has not been kind to my promises...

> I think the main issue is that we don't mean the same thing by "deploy
> things". For web developers, it seems that deploying mean repeat an
> exact environment with all its dependencies on a similar machine (or set
> of machines), often by the same person (or at least a technically
> competent person). In that scenario, if there is a problem (wrong
> pythonpath, double entry from an egg, etc...), you can easily fix it,
> and being able to use latest version of some libraries + developer
> convenience is the key.
> 
> By deploying, I mean being able to give a single file which people can
> install by themselves, people who are often ignorant about PYTHONPATH,
> import mechanisms, what a .pth file is. 

Well, buildout.cfg is exacltly that file for me, for both cases ;-)

Chris - for the record: .pth files are evil and should be punished...

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