[Distutils] current preferred way to specify dependencies? future?

["Martin v. Löwis"]

>  > os.machine == 'i386'

It should be platform.machine, not os.machine.

> Haven't seen a '386 for over ten years.. Intel have standardised
> to calling everything 'Pentium' pretty much since at least 2000.

Irrelevant:

Python 2.5.4 (r254:67916, Nov 19 2009, 19:46:21)
[GCC 4.3.4] on linux2
Type "help", "copyright", "credits" or "license" for more information.
py> import platform
py> platform.machine()
'i686'

The platform module has been around in Python for quite some time.
Too bad you haven't noticed it yet.

> imho 'win32' is a really confusing term. That implies that it won't
> work on 64bit. When in fact it mostly will.

No, it implies that the test will be true on all systems where the
platform value in the sys module will be win32. That *also* has
been around for ages (ever since Python started, basically).

> as platform markers. It doesn't require a big change to
> the PEP. And it is actually simpler to implement I would
> expect.

Whereas using the built-in platform identification mechanism
would be extremely difficult?

Regards,
Martin