[Distutils] Making pip and PyPI work with conda packages

[Paul Moore]

On 19 May 2015 at 20:26, Chris Barker <chris.barker at noaa.gov> wrote:
> This entire conversation is about when the build dependencies are NOT simple
> :-). And while it may be project specific, commonly used libs are not
> project specific, and they are where the time and pain are. So some shared
> infrastructure would be nice.

Fair point.

> And maybe all that needs to be is a gitHub project with build scripts. But I
> had little luck in getting any traction that way. That is, until we had
> Anaconda, conda and binstar ---  an infrastructure that provides a way for
> folks to collaborate on this kind of ugly package building effort.

Yeah, it's all about getting people interested. I wish the github
project model would work (it did for msys2) but just wishing doesn't
help much.

Let me ask a different question, then. If I wanted to get hold of
(say) libraries for libyaml, libxml2, and maybe a few others (libxpm?)
is the conda work of any use for me? I don't want to build conda
packages, or depend on them, I just want to grab Python-compatible
libraries that I can link into my extension wheel build, or into my
application that embeds Python. Ideally, I'd want static libs, but I
understand that conda doesn't go that route (at the moment, at least).
Even if it's just for me to better understand how conda works, is
there an easy to follow guide I could read to see how the conda build
of libyaml works? (I assume there must *be* a conda build of libyaml,
as conda includes pyyaml which uses libyaml...)

I suspect the answer is "no, conda's not designed to support that use
case". Which is fine - but a shame. The "github project with build
scripts" approach could potentially allow *more* users of the builds
and libraries, And that, in a nutshell is the problem (on Windows, at
least) - the community of people developing builds of common Unix
tools and libraries is completely fragmented - msys2, conda, mingw,
...

Anyway, I feel like we're now going round in circles. It's a hard
(social) issue, and I don't feel like I have any answers, really.

Paul