[Distutils] whats the best way to depend on tools needed for setup.py/setup metadata

[P.J. Eby]

At 08:53 PM 9/14/2010 +0200, Ronny Pfannschmidt wrote:
>Hi,
>
>i'd like to support turning my guess version from hg metadata tool into
>a setup dependency and thus kill the need to ship a python file.
>
>Currently i just import it + call a function,
>but that doesn't exactly work if the module is missing and a dependency.
>
>Is there any way to turn it into some sort of plugin/extension that
>automatically gets installed/used to get that metadata.

See my answer here:

http://mail.python.org/pipermail/distutils-sig/2010-August/016690.html

And Jason's follow-up here:

http://mail.python.org/pipermail/distutils-sig/2010-August/016694.html

You may also want to take a look at what hgtools is doing, to get the 
exact code.