[Distutils] C extension dependencies

[Paul Moore]

On 9 September 2014 16:59, Collin Anderson <collinmanderson at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> Is there any way packages could list external dependencies? Maybe
> something like requires = ['Python.h', 'somethingelse.h']. I realize
> there's not much that pip can do about it automatically, but maybe pip
> could try to figure out if you have those files around and warn if it
> doesn't see them.

I don't think pip could realistically check if such files exist (there
are too many variations in where they might be, etc) but it might be
plausible to allow a package to declare its external dependencies
somehow, maybe just as free text, and then if the package build fails,
pip could display that information.

Maybe have a build_hint metadata item that pip could display if a
build fails. That could be reasonably easy with Metadata 2.0, which
allows for metadata extensions.

The trick is to get packages to include such a thing. It would be a
shame to add the mechanism and never have it be used.

Paul