[Distutils] it's happened - wheels without sdists (flit)

[Paul Moore]

On 30 March 2015 at 16:06, Donald Stufft <donald at stufft.io> wrote:
>> On Mar 30, 2015, at 10:59 AM, Daniel Holth <dholth at gmail.com> wrote:
>>
>> Yes, setup.py should die. Flit is one example, and you can understand
>> it not by copy/pasting, but by spending half an hour reading its
>> complete source code.
>
> I don’t have a problem with flit (although I’m not sure it’s easier, it
> appears it took the setup.py keyword args and turned them into ini file
> directives). I do have a problem with any solution which doesn’t include
> sdist support.

Personally, I could see a benefit to something that allowed me to
write my setup.py as

import fancytool
fancytool.setup()

and got everything from a static file. But otherwise worked just like
distutils/setuptools (i.e. fancytool.setup() calls setuptools.setup()
behind the scenes). I'd be happy if it only handled pure-python
packages, and if it didn't cover complicated things. I wouldn't be
worried that I had to manually install fancytool before my setup.py
worked (no setup_requires stuff here, thanks!)

I don't see "don't use setuptools behind the scenes" as a necessary
goal. I *do* see "make the UI simple for 90% of projects" as a
worthwhile goal.

I like the idea and goal behind flit. I'm not sure the implementation
strategy is sufficiently compatible with existing practices, though.

Paul