[Distutils] setuptools wish list

[Nick Coghlan]

On 15 June 2014 10:25, lunasspecto at gmail.com <lunasspecto at gmail.com> wrote:
> So my wish list for setuptools or a similar tool is:
>
> *
>
> Automated XDG menu entry generation
>
> *
>
> Some way to handle dependencies that can't be installed by pip
>
> *
>
> Automated generation of Debian binary packages good enough to be accepted
> into the repositories
>
> *
>
> Automated generation of rpm packages with all the right dependencies (For
> all I know this could exist already, but considering the way dependencies
> are currently handled by setuptools I really doubt it)

These are all dependent on having platform specific extensions in
metadata 2.0 to allow the platform specific metadata tweaks to be
added without needing to manually duplicate the upstream metadata. The
main focus there at the moment is in getting the PEP 440 versioning
spec to a releasable state (Donald Stufft has been working on ensuring
that can be integrated sensibly into pip, and there's a major update
to all the draft metadata 2.0 PEPs coming soon based on that work).

Once 440 is resolved satisfactorily, the focus will shift to PEP 426
itself, along with the initial iteration of the "standard extensions"
in 459. With install hooks postponed for the time being (in favour of
the more general "required extension" mechanism) most of the open
questions there are actually around PEP 440, although the proposed
design of the "constraints" based install time integrity checking
model will need review.

> *
> In a perfect universe, easy cross-building functionality, so I could produce
> a standalone Windows executable or an OS X app from the comfort of Xubuntu.

A build farm integrated into PyPI is also on the wishlist, but behind
the migration to Warehouse on the list of things to be worked on (it
also depends on the improved handling of build dependencies that is
part of the metadata 2.0 definition). Donald could provide a better
update than I can in terms of the current status of the Warehouse
migration, and the remaining blockers.

Cheers,
Nick.

-- 
Nick Coghlan   |   ncoghlan at gmail.com   |   Brisbane, Australia