[Distutils] User Viewpoint: Packaging History, Confusion and User Advice

[Vinay Sajip]

PJ Eby <pje <at> telecommunity.com> writes:

> ended for setuptools on Python 2, or at least Python <2.6.  (The
> distinction being that distlib seems to be heavily reliant on features
> that only exist in 2.6+.)

The reason for setting 2.6 as the minimum version supported is that one can
easily have a single codebase for 2.6+ and 3.x. Once that minimum is set,
one might as well use the features available, where appropriate.

> Or, to put it somewhat differently, if pkg_resources ever ends up in
> the stdlib, it should probably happen in the form of a distlib
> wrapper.  

The subset of pkg_resources used by pip has already been wrapped in a
compatibility shim called "pip.compat.pkg_resources" [1] which uses distlib
to implement the functions used. With this shim in place all pip tests pass,
but it's early days :-)

However, I view that as a transitional stage which allows pip to gradually
move over to calling distlib directly, while not rocking the boat too much.

Regards,

Vinay Sajip

[1] https://github.com/vsajip/pip/blob/use-distlib/pip/compat/pkg_resources.py