[Distutils] Comments on PEP 426

[Antoine Pitrou]

Donald Stufft <donald <at> stufft.io> writes:
> >> with a more complicated 20% "scipy" distutils
> >> replacement but neither will necessarily need to be in the standard
> >> library;
> > 
> > If users start to have to install third-party software to build and
> > package their own libraries, then it's a huge regression (regardless
> > of what *you* may think about "batteries included").
> 
> I haven't followed this thread yet, but just to comment on this users are
> already installing third party software to build and package their own
> libraries. From what i've seen working with packaging distutils is either
> a fallback or not used at all in the bulk of cases.

Which "bulk of cases"?

If I take a look at some popular libraries (Django, Tornado, Twisted,
SQLAlchemy), all are able to build without setuptools. Do you have
any statistics?

The sticking point is that you don't *have* to install something third-party
to get yourself working on some packaging. Being able to benefit from
additional features *if* you install something else is of course fine.

Regards

Antoine.