[Distutils] depending on setuptools is discouraged?

[Donald Stufft]

> On Oct 23, 2014, at 4:23 PM, Michael Merickel <me at m.merickel.org> wrote:
> 
> I'm noticing a trend that depending on setuptools is discouraged[1] in
> the install_requires of your setup.py. However, some packages like
> pyramid have core features that depend on pkg_resources (which is part
> of setuptools). Thus, we depend on it. As I've monitored distutils-sig
> I haven't seen any talk of separating these packages. To me, requiring
> the use of pkg_resources is a very valid use-case for depending on
> setuptools as it provides many improvements over the basic
> `pkgutil.get_data` API.
> 
> Since I'm not aware of a workaround for this problem, and I'm seeing
> setuptools be categorically discouraged, perhaps I am just unaware and
> need to be enlightened?
> 
> Thanks!
> 
> [1] https://mail.python.org/pipermail/distutils-sig/2014-October/025131.html
> _______________________________________________
> Distutils-SIG maillist  -  Distutils-SIG at python.org
> https://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/distutils-sig

To be specific that post was talking about using the idiom that will
automatically bootstrap setuptools when you run setup.py::

    from distribute_setup import use_setuptools
    use_setuptools(version="0.6.49”)

Projects *should* depend on setuptools in install_requires if their
project itself uses something inside of setuptools as a runtime
dependency (e.g. not in setup.py).

---
Donald Stufft
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