[Distutils] Builders vs Installers

[Daniel Holth]

On Wed, Mar 27, 2013 at 11:22 AM, Lennart Regebro <regebro at gmail.com> wrote:
> On Wed, Mar 27, 2013 at 3:47 PM, Vinay Sajip <vinay_sajip at yahoo.co.uk> wrote:
>> One likely scenario on Windows is that you have a compiler and can install from
>> sdists or wheels, but want to distribute packages to people who don't have a
>> compiler, so can only install from wheels.
>
> Which means you are actually not just a simple end user, but ops or
> devops who want to build packages. And then the question arises why we
> can't have documentation explaining how to build packages with the
> packaging tools that is usable for that user.
>
> Fine, as a stop-gap measure pip wheel might be useful, as this
> mythical packaging tool doesn't really exist yet (except as
> bdist_wheel, but I suspect pip wheel does more than that?)
> But in the long run I don't see the point, and I think it muddles what
> pip is and does.

Then you are also in favor of removing sdist support from the "pip
install" command, in the same way that rpm doesn't automatically
compile srpm.

Pip wheel does nothing more than run bdist_wheel on each package in a
requirements set. It's kindof a stopgap measure but it's also a firm
foundation for the more decoupled way packaging should work.