[Distutils] Expectations on how pip needs to change for Python 3.4

[Oscar Benjamin]

On 17 July 2013 00:56, Donald Stufft <donald at stufft.io> wrote:
>
> On Jul 16, 2013, at 1:36 PM, Matthias Klose <doko at ubuntu.com> wrote:
>
> 5. Support cross-compilation of extensions by default.
>
> TBH I don't know how much of this has anything to do with pip? As far as
> compiling goes all pip does is call setup.py install so people are compiling
> with either setuptools or distutils.

I'm not involved in the current packaging work so someone else can
correct me if I'm wrong but:

What I'm really looking forward to as a result of all of this work on
wheels and packaging metadata is that there will no longer be any need
for people to use either setuptools or distutils to compile anything.
Once this work is ready it will be possible for developers to build
wheels using whatever tools they like and then upload them to pypi.
pip will be able to select the appropriate wheel for the end user's
OS, CPU, Python version etc. and install the binary wheel without
needing any compiler support on the target system.

What this means is that it will be possible to do all the compilation
on developers machines so that the tools to do so don't need to be in
the stdlib any more. Then someone will be able to release the
"fancycompiler" package on pypi that will support features like
cross-compilation, other developers can use it, and the end user
doesn't need to care how the wheels were made.


Oscar