[Distutils] Towards a simple and standard sdist format that isn't intertwined with distutils

[Robert Collins]

On 12 October 2015 at 19:23, Ralf Gommers <ralf.gommers at gmail.com> wrote:
>
>
> On Mon, Oct 12, 2015 at 6:37 AM, Robert Collins <robertc at robertcollins.net>
> wrote:
>>
>> On 12 October 2015 at 17:06, Robert Collins <robertc at robertcollins.net>
>> wrote:
>> > EWOW, huge thread.
>> >
>> > I've read nearly all of it but in order not to make it massively
>> > worse, I'm going to reply to all the points I think need raising in
>> > one mail :).
>>
>> And a bugfix :) - I didn't link to the docs for the build system
>> interface we have today -
>>
>> https://pip.pypa.io/en/latest/reference/pip_install/#build-system-interface
>
>
> From that link:
> """
> In order for pip to install a package from source, setup.py must implement
> the following commands:
> ...
> The install command should implement the complete process of installing the
> package to the target directory XXX.
>  """
> That just sounds so wrong. You want the build system to build, not install.

Right so - with the automatic wheel cache we added, that is only used
if building a wheel failed. So you can consider it to be legacy cruft
- the preferred interface is build-a-wheel then install-that-wheel.

> And if "install" actually means "build to a tempdir so pip can copy it over
> it to its final location", then how does that address something like
> installing docs to a different dir than the package itself?

Well, how do we install docs to a different dir with wheels? If we've
got an answer for that, I think we're in a good position to figure
something out for install (even if that is 'fix your package so it can
build wheels).

-Rob


-- 
Robert Collins <rbtcollins at hp.com>
Distinguished Technologist
HP Converged Cloud