[Distutils] Comments on PEP 426

[Paul Moore]

On 4 September 2013 17:20, Carl Meyer <carl at oddbird.net> wrote:
> On 09/04/2013 07:27 AM, Nick Coghlan wrote:
>> I was under the impression pip *already* forced the use of setuptools
>> (to ensure "--record" is available)
>
> Sidenote, and already mentioned by MAL upthread, but --record is a
> distutils feature, not a setuptools feature, so this is not the reason
> pip forces setuptools.

My apologies. That was me spreading that misinformation. I have no
idea where I got it from, but I've just checked and distutils at least
back to Python 2.5 has this features. And to compound my error, I have
certainly said this on multiple occasions :-(

Next time I'll check my facts more carefully.

> I think the actual reason is so that pip can have a uniform way to
> access metadata (including dependency metadata that only setuptools has)
> by running "setup.py egg-info", which is setuptools-only. (It also means
> pip can install everything with the same installed format, including the
> .egg-info metadata directory).

Actually, there is an install_egg_info command available in distutils,
also back to at least Python 2.5. For some reason, it's not displayed
by setup.py --help-commands, but it is there nevertheless.

Paul.