[Distutils] setup_requires and install_requires

[Nick Coghlan]

On 25 May 2014 23:53, Toby St Clere Smithe <mail at tsmithe.net> wrote:
> Nick Coghlan <ncoghlan at gmail.com> writes:
>> Ah, the, distutils tracker is actually bugs.python.org, but that's not
>> generally what people want - as you did, they want the setuptools
>> issue tracker on BitBucket, since distutils in the standard library
>> isn't really getting major updates any more.
>
> Are distutils and setuptools intended to merge? From the outside it
> seems that distutils is either a subset of setuptools, or an older
> implementation of similar functionality, or a bit of both. If distutils
> is obsolete, why does it hang around?

Backwards compatibility is the only reason.

> ... Actually, I just found [1], so I guess this is a work in
> progress. It seems weird to me that this isn't entirely clear from the
> docs.python.org documentation at [2]; I suppose a sentence to the effect
> of "setuptools is intended to supercede distutils" under 'Key terms'
> would suffice. But I think I'm nit-picking now.

"setuptools" and "wheel" are definitely key terms worth mentioning at
that point in the doc, and a direct link to the tool recommendations
in the packaging users' guide would also be appropriate.

Hence: http://hg.python.org/cpython/rev/8be7bfceacf4

It should show up at https://docs.python.org/3/distributing/ before
too long (I don't recall the current docs build frequency).

> Clearly, the history
> here is quite complex, and it needs more time to settle.

Indeed :)

The current tooling recommendations are at:
https://packaging.python.org/en/latest/current.html

The general outline of the current plans:
https://packaging.python.org/en/latest/future.html

And if you're intrigued enough to want to dive into more of the history:
https://packaging.python.org/en/latest/history.html
http://python-notes.curiousefficiency.org/en/latest/pep_ideas/core_packaging_api.html

Cheers,
Nick.

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