[Distutils] Comments on PEP 426

[Paul Moore]

On 4 September 2013 08:13, M.-A. Lemburg <mal at egenix.com> wrote:
> It's not about reinventing the wheel, it's taking the good bits
> from setuptools and moving them into distutils to make them
> standard for Python 3.4+, allowing setuptools to stop monkey patching
> distutils and extensions to stop relying on a setuptools
> patched distutils.

Personally, I was thinking about externally packaged extensions to
distutils - a sort of "setuptools lite" if you like. I think Antoine
has a point in that people do tend to keep suggesting "updating
distutils" forgetting that there is no way that is ever going to
happen. To my knowledge, no core committer is willing to apply patches
to distutils[1] and the track record of someone external getting core
privs and trying to apply distutils changes consists of Tarek, who
despite all his efforts didn't manage to get anywhere.

> I guess that's what the suggestion is all about: avoiding
> reinventing the wheel, endless discussions and instead going
> for standard software refactoring techniques.

To my mind the biggest issue (and again, I'm with Antoine here -
people keep forgetting this) is that there are no defined API specs to
work to. You can't implement "just the important bits" of setuptools
without knowing what those bits are, and what the interface to them
is.

I do suspect that the issue is not so much forgetfulness as optimism -
people keep hoping that we can find a clean and simple solution, in
spite of the overwhelming evidence that it'll never happen. But maybe
that's just me being optimistic as well :-)

Paul

[1] For what are probably very good reasons - it seems like it's a
sure-fire route to instant burnout :-(