[Distutils] a plea for backward-compatibility / smooth transitions

[Lennart Regebro]

On Mon, Jul 29, 2013 at 8:17 PM, Donald Stufft <donald at stufft.io> wrote:
>> - - Distribute / setuptools merge, e.g. cratering folks who use a
>>   distro-managed 'python-distribute' package.
>
>
> This is the biggest issue. I wasn't involved and it could have been handled
> better sure.

I'm not convinced. The use-cases and ways these things can be
installed in conjunction with things like system packages, virtualenv
and buildout in various configurations and various python versions are
mindboggling. Some of them were not initially tested, probably mostly
because nobody realized the finer details of what would happen in
these sometimes fairly obscure cases.

The problems have, afaik, now been fixed, and this was done reasonably
quickly IMO. OK, of course it *could* have been handled better, but I
don't think it was handled badly.

The current situation is a huge mess. Untangling it *will* be tricky.

//Lennart