[Distutils] PEP 439 and pip bootstrap updated

[Donald Stufft]

On Jul 12, 2013, at 12:16 PM, Vinay Sajip <vinay_sajip at yahoo.co.uk> wrote:

> Donald Stufft <donald <at> stufft.io> writes:
> 
>> I'm also against adding distlib-like functionality to the stdlib. At least at
>> this point in time. We've seen the far reaching effects that adding a
>> packaging lib directly to the stdlib can have. I don't want to see us repeat
>> the mistakes of the past and add distlib into the stdlib. Maybe in time once
>> the packaging world isn't evolving so rapidly and distlib has had a lot of
>> real world use that can be an option. The benefit for me in the way the pip/
> 
> On the question of whether distlib should or shouldn't be added to the stdlib,
> obviously that's for others to decide. My belief is that infrastructure areas
> like this need *some* stdlib underpinning. Also, distlib is pretty low-level,
> at the level of mechanism rather than policy, so there's no reason to be too
> paranoid about it in general terms. There's also some element of chicken
> and egg - inertia being what it is, I wouldn't expect *any* new packaging
> software outside the stdlib to gain significant adoption at any reasonable rate
> while the status quo is good enough for many people. But the status quo doesn't
> seem to allow any room for innovation.

Eh, installing a pure Python Wheel is pretty simple. Especially if you restrict the
options it can have. I don't see any reason why the bootstrap script can't include
that as an internal implementation detail.

I think it's kind of funny when folks say that new packaging software *needs* to 
be in the standard library when setuptools has pretty emphatically shown us
that no it doesn't. People have problems with packaging, solve them without
throwing away the world and they'll migrate.

> 
> Distil is completely self-contained and does not require distlib to be in the
> stdlib, but it already does what could reasonably have been expected of
> packaging (if it had got into 3.3) and then some. What's more, it doesn't
> require installing into every venv - one copy covers all venvs (2.6+), user
> site-packages and system site-packages.

pip used to have this and it was removed as a misfeature as it caused more
problems then it solved.

> 
>> setuptools bootstrap is handled is that it's not merely imported into the
>> stdlib and called done. It'll fetch the latest pip during each bootstrap,
>> making it not a point of stagnation like distutils was.
> 
> My pyvenvex script does this now. For venvs, that's the bootstrap right there.
> 
> Of course, in cases where you want repeatability, getting the latest version
> each time might not be what you want :-)

I haven't read your script in depth. But if that's all that's needed let's make
sure it's done automatically for folks.

> 
> Regards,
> 
> Vinay Sajip
> 
> _______________________________________________
> Distutils-SIG maillist  -  Distutils-SIG at python.org
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-----------------
Donald Stufft
PGP: 0x6E3CBCE93372DCFA // 7C6B 7C5D 5E2B 6356 A926 F04F 6E3C BCE9 3372 DCFA

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