[Distutils] Status of distutils & Co.?

Éric Araujo merwok at netwok.org
Fri Oct 28 18:22:25 CEST 2011


Hi Hartmut,

> while lurking on this lists for quite some month, I'm still wondering 
> about the status of all the different distutils tools, including 
> setuptool, pkg_resources, pip, ...). To my impression, there are some 
> efforts around, but I'm missing some kind of overview or strategy.
We don’t have a PEP but there is information out there:
-
https://tarekziade.wordpress.com/2010/03/03/the-fate-of-distutils-pycon-summit-packaging-sprint-detailed-report/
-
http://stackoverflow.com/questions/6344076/differences-between-distribute-distutils-and-setuptools

In short:
- distutils deprecated
- distribute deprecated
- distutils2 implements new standards (PEPs) and is recommended
- transition period expected, compatibility layer in distutils2

> Beside the forest of tools, it seams to me, as if the distribution 
> format is not "stable": pip seams to prefer archives over eggs.

Different formats work for different people.  Setuptools invented eggs,
which are not supported by newer tools like pip and distutils2.  Windows
users tend to prefer clicky installers anyway.  There’s a long
discussion in progress on python-dev about a kind of binary distribution
that can be supported by distutils2 (and pip when it moves from
setuptools to d2 as underlying library).

Cheers


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