[Distutils] Worry about lack of focus

[Noah Kantrowitz]

So we've recently seen a big resurgence in activity on improving Python packaging. First off, thats good, hopefully thats why we are all here. That said, I'm becoming worried about a possible lack of focus, and I know I'm not the only one. There have been many ideas floated, and many PEPs either sketched out, reworked, or are stated to be in planning. I think perhaps we should work out some kind of shortlist of what we think can and should be accomplished in the short term and just keep a running list of topics that need energy but are lower priority. This would reduce the chances of hitting the "fix the whole world at once" situation that we have run in to before in this attempt, which often results in burnout and frustration all around. Just to kick things off here are the rough topics I can think of that I've seen discussed recently (ignoring that many of these are dependent on each other):

* Including pip with Python 3.4
* Bundling setuptools with pip
* Splitting setuptools and pkg_resources
* Replacing the executable generation in pip with something new
* Working out how to let pip upgrade itself on Windows
* Entrypoints in distutils/the stdlib
* Executable generation in distlib
* Signing/vetting of releases
* General improvements to the wheel format
* General improvements to package metadata

Apologies for anything I have mis-paraphrased or missed, but that is definitely a lot of things to have up in the air. Just want to make sure we can get everything done without anyone going crazy(er) and that we keep sight of whats going on.

--Noah

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