[Distutils] Q about best practices now (or near future)

[Brett Cannon]

On Wed, Jul 17, 2013 at 12:45 PM, Donald Stufft <donald at stufft.io> wrote:

>
> On Jul 17, 2013, at 12:39 PM, Brett Cannon <brett at python.org> wrote:
>
>
>
>
> On Wed, Jul 17, 2013 at 11:46 AM, Daniel Holth <dholth at gmail.com> wrote:
>
>> On Wed, Jul 17, 2013 at 11:12 AM, Brett Cannon <brett at python.org> wrote:
>> > I'm going to be pushing an update to one of my projects to PyPI this
>> week
>> > and so I figured I could use this opportunity to help with patches to
>> the
>> > User Guide's packaging tutorial.
>> >
>> > But to do that I wanted to ask what the current best practices are.
>> >
>> > * Are we even close to suggesting wheels for source distributions?
>>
>> No, wheels don't replace source distributions at all. They just let
>> you install something without having to have whatever built the wheel
>> from its sdist. It is currently nice to have them available.
>>
>
> Then I'm thoroughly confused since the Wheel PEP says in its rationale
> that "Python needs a package format that is easier to install than sdist".
> That would suggest a wheel would work for a source distribution and replace
> sdist zip/tar files. If wheels aren't going to replace what sdist spits out
> as the installation file format of choice for pip what is it for, just
> binary files alone?
>
> -Brett
>
>
> You *can* publish only Wheels, especially i your package is pure python.
> However it's a "built" package. You should still publish the sdist (and
> sdist 2.0 when that happens) because a Wheel is (essentially) derived from
> a sdist.
>
> It is easier for the tooling to install and in general you'll want to use
> them, but not everything supports Wheel and some people will want to build
> their own wheels. Think of Wheel as a debian package and the sdist as the
> source package. Ideally the majority of the time people will be installing
> from the Wheel but the sdist is still there for those who don't.
>
>
OK, that makes sense and what I understood wheels to be.Thanks for the
clarification! Daniel's wording made me think suddenly that wheel files
were only for distributions that had an extension or something.

But it also sounds like that project providing wheel distributions is too
early to include in the User's Guide.

-Brett


>
>
>
>
>>
>> I'd like to see an ambitious person begin uploading wheels that have
>> no traditional sdist.
>>
>> > * Are we promoting (weakly, strongly?) the signing of distributions yet?
>>
>> No change.
>>
>> > * Are we saying "use setuptools" for everyone, or still only if you
>> need it
>> > (asking since there is a stub about installing setuptools but the simple
>> > example doesn't have a direct need for it ATM, but could use
>> find_packages()
>> > and such)?
>>
>> Setuptools is the preferred distutils-derived system. distutils should
>> no longer be considered morally superior.
>>
>> The MEBS idea, or a simple setup.py emulator and a contract with the
>> installer on which commands it will actually call, will eventually let
>> you do a proper job of choosing build systems.
>>
>
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>
> -----------------
> Donald Stufft
> PGP: 0x6E3CBCE93372DCFA // 7C6B 7C5D 5E2B 6356 A926 F04F 6E3C BCE9 3372
> DCFA
>
>
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