[Distutils] Comments on PEP 426
Antoine Pitrou
solipsis at pitrou.net
Sat Aug 31 17:03:25 CEST 2013
Oscar Benjamin <oscar.j.benjamin <at> gmail.com> writes:
>
> The difference between this
>
> # setup.py
> if sys.argv[1] == 'install':
> from myproj.build import build
> build()
>
> and something like this
>
> # setup.cfg
> [install]
> command = "from myproj.build import build; build()"
Well, sure, this is a rather silly way to use a ini-style declarative
format. I agree we wouldn't gain anything if setup.cfg files ended up
written like this.
> > I tend to disagree. Such bugs are not fixed, not because they shouldn't /
> > can't be fixed, but because distutils isn't really competently maintained
> > (or not maintained at all, actually; Éric sometimes replies on bug entries
> > but he doesn't commit anything these days).
>
> So is that particular issue a lost cause?
Why would it be?
> > The idea that "distutils shouldn't change" was more of a widely-promoted
> > propaganda item than a rational decision, IMO. Most setup scripts wouldn't
> > suffer from distutils changes or improvements; the few that *may* suffer
> > belong to large projects which probably have other items to solve when a
> > new Python comes out, anyway.
>
> It's not just the setup script for a particular project. It's the
> particular combination of compilers and setup.py invocations used by
> any given user for any given setup.py from each of the thousands of
> projects that do anything non-trivial in their setup.py.
I don't know what those "thousands of projects" are. Most Python projects
don't even need a compiler, except Python itself.
> For example
> in the issue I mentioned above the spanner in the works came from PJE
> who wanted to use --compiler=mingw32 while surreptitiously placing
> Cygwin's gcc on PATH:
> http://bugs.python.org/issue12641#msg161514
> It's hard for distutils to react to outside changes in e.g. external
> compilers because of the need to try and prevent breaking countless
> unknown and obscure setups for each end user.
This sounds like a deformation of reality. Most users don't have
"unknown and obscure setups", they actually have quite standardized
and well-known ones (think Windows, OS X, mainstream Linux distros).
Sure, in some communities (scientific programming, I suppose) there
may be obscure setups, but those communities have already grown their
own bag of tips and tricks, AFAIK.
Regards
Antoine.
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