[Distutils] setup.cfg new format proposal

[P.J. Eby]

At 02:50 AM 9/12/2009 +0200, Tarek Ziadé wrote:
>it means that we can even provide an XML-RPC service at PyPI so people
>can query the metadata for their platform with zero download and zero
>third-party
>code execution.

Ah, now that does sound rather useful, as it would allow installation 
and similar tools to resolve dependencies without first needing to 
build or download binaries.


>I can see a use case of the configure.py file you are describing:
>prepare the compilation some C Extensions by looking for some libs etc,
>
>But that's something that can already be done with setup.py when you build
>or install the distribution.
>
>So what would be the metadata field that would require to look for a
>library location ?

I had in mind that if you had such a configure script, it could also 
generate a manifest of files to be installed, e.g. translation files, 
docs, data, scripts, etc., for the use of a simplified installer 
system.  (Ala the BUILDS proposal of about a year ago.)