[Distutils] distlib - installer support vs runtime support

[Daniel Holth]

It would be great to maintain and install pkg_resources separately. The
idea has come up before, including the idea of just putting pkg_resources
in the system library without the rest of setuptools (it will stay on pypi
now - pip install pkg_resources)
On Mar 9, 2013 1:29 PM, "Paul Moore" <p.f.moore at gmail.com> wrote:

> As part of a discussion on a pip issue, it was noted that if pip
> depends on distlib for installer capabilities (e.g., locators, wheel
> installation, version and requirement parsing and matching, etc) then
> the user needs distlib installed as well as pip. That shouldn't be an
> issue for an end user, any more than having pip itself installed would
> be.
>
> However, there are some capabilites of distlib (notably the "exports"
> functionality that replaces setuptools' entry points) that are
> intended to be used at runtime, by the end user. (I suspect, but
> haven't checked, that the exe wrapper functionality depends on exports
> as well - it certainly does in setuptools). That means that the end
> user *is* affected by the fact that pip depends on distlib. For
> example, if the user needs a later version of distlib, it's quite
> likely that he won't be able to "pip install" it, as pip typically has
> trouble upgrading its own dependencies (for obvious reasons...)
>
> Would it be worth considering splitting distlib into two separate
> parts - one that is intended solely for writers of installers and
> similar tools, and another for "runtime support" functions that end
> users would use? It may not be a practical thing to achieve, but it
> would be worth at least understanding the trade-offs involved.
>
> Paul.
>
> PS The same issue exists in setuptools, but as far as I am aware,
> setuptools was deliberately designed to provide both the installation
> tools and runtime support in the one package. (And IIUC, even with
> setuptools, pkg_resources is the only component that includes runtime
> support, so in theory it is possible to split the two parts up).
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