[Distutils] PEP 439 and pip bootstrap updated

[Daniel Holth]

On Thu, Jul 11, 2013 at 9:33 AM, Paul Moore <p.f.moore at gmail.com> wrote:
> On 11 July 2013 13:49, Brett Cannon <brett at python.org> wrote:
>>
>> The dead-simple, extremely elegant solution (starting in Python 3.4) is to
>> make pip a namespace package in the stdlib with nothing more than a
>> __main__.py file that installs pip; no checking if it's installed and then
>> running it, etc, just blindly install pip. Then, if you install pip as a
>> regular package, it takes precedence and what's in the stdlib is completely
>> ignored (this helps with any possible staleness with the stdlib's bootstrap
>> script vs. what's in pip, etc.). You don't even need to change the
>> __main__.py in pip as it stands today since namespace packages only work if
>> no regular package is found.
>
>
> Wow - that is exceptionally cool. I had never realised namespace packages
> would work like this.

Not exceptionally cool ... and that's why the namespace_package form
is popular, since the first package in a set of namespace packages
that gets it wrong breaks everything.