[Distutils] PEP 439 and pip bootstrap updated

Donald Stufft donald at stufft.io
Fri Jul 12 19:27:19 CEST 2013


On Jul 12, 2013, at 1:10 PM, Vinay Sajip <vinay_sajip at yahoo.co.uk> wrote:

> Donald Stufft <donald <at> stufft.io> writes:
> 
>> 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.
> 
> Sorry, I don't understand what you mean here, in terms of which of my points
> you are responding to.

Maybe I misunderstood your point :) I thought you were saying that by installing
pip using setup.py install we are "blessing" setup.py install again? I was saying
we don't need to do that.

> 
>> 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.
> 
> Inertia definitely is a thing - otherwise why complain that an explicit
> bootstrap
> is much worse than an implicit one? The difference in work to use one rather
> than
> another isn't that great. I'm not saying that distlib (or any equivalent
> software) *has* or *needs* to be in the stdlib, merely that adoption will be
> faster if it is, and also that it is the right kind of software
> (infrastructure) which could reasonably be expected to be in the stdlib of a
> language which is acclaimed for (amongst other things) "batteries included".
> 
> Setuptools, while not itself in the stdlib, built on packaging software that
> was, so the cases are not quite equivalent. Users did not have to do a major
> shift away from "executable setup.py", but if we're asking them to do that,
> it's slightly more work to migrate, even if you don't "throw away the world".
> And of course I agree that easing migration is important, which is why I've
> worked on migrating setup.py logic to declarative PEP 426, as far as is
> practicable.

I'm not overly found of bootstrapping setuptools itself, but I think unless pip
comes along and bundles setuptools like it has done distlib it's a nesceary
evil right now. Ideally In the future we can move things to where setuptools
is just a build tool and isn't something needed at install time unless you're
doing a build.

I generally agree that a packaging library is the type of item that belongs in
a stdlib, I don't think it belongs in there *yet*. We can work around it not being
there, and that means we can be more agile about it and evolve the tooling
till we are happy with them instead of trying to get it in as quickly as possible
to make things easier in the short term and possibly harder in the long term.

> 
>> pip used to have this and it was removed as a misfeature as it caused more
>> problems then it solved.
> 
> Was it exactly the same? I don't remember this. I'd be interested in the
> specifics - can you point me to any more detailed information about this?
> 
>> I haven't read your script in depth
> 
> There's not much to it, it shouldn't take too long to review :-)
> 
> Regards,
> 
> Vinay Sajip
> 
> 
> _______________________________________________
> Distutils-SIG maillist  -  Distutils-SIG at python.org
> http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/distutils-sig


-----------------
Donald Stufft
PGP: 0x6E3CBCE93372DCFA // 7C6B 7C5D 5E2B 6356 A926 F04F 6E3C BCE9 3372 DCFA

-------------- next part --------------
A non-text attachment was scrubbed...
Name: signature.asc
Type: application/pgp-signature
Size: 841 bytes
Desc: Message signed with OpenPGP using GPGMail
URL: <http://mail.python.org/pipermail/distutils-sig/attachments/20130712/986ac1c4/attachment.pgp>


More information about the Distutils-SIG mailing list