[Distutils] PEP439 and backward compat / easy_install / distlib

[holger krekel]

On Sun, Mar 24, 2013 at 09:49 -0400, Daniel Holth wrote:
> Did you know that the "wheel convert" command masks wheels from eggs?

Wasn't aware, thanks for the pointer.  That should certainly be part of
the PEP439 discussion i ask for in the first paragraph.

holger

> On Mar 24, 2013 5:48 AM, "holger krekel" <holger at merlinux.eu> wrote:
> 
> > Hi Richard, all,
> >
> > two first notes on PEP439.
> >
> > backward compat with present-day release files: the PEP should state
> > it as a goal or at least discuss it in some depth.  In that context, the
> > choice of providing a bootstrap for pip rather than easy_install needs
> > reasoning.  One problem with pip, compared to easy_install, is
> > that it doesn't support eggs which is a problem particularly on
> > Windows machines where often no fitting C compiler is available.  If the
> > remedy here is to support wheels and recommend it's use, it is still a
> > backward compatibility problem: many users will not be able to use the
> > builtin-supported installer to install todays existing egg release files.
> >
> > setuptools and distlib:  Even if Python3.4+ had a mature distlib
> > providing minimal setuptools functionality, how would it work for the
> > typical "python setup.py install" which is invoked by pip?  Often those
> > setup.py scripts depend on a setuptools package.
> >
> > I am highlighting these two backward-compat aspects because otherwise
> > we might run into this problem: http://xkcd.com/927/ and i understood
> > that most people involved in improving the packaging ecology want
> > to avoid that :)
> >
> > best,
> > holger
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