[Distutils] Time for a setuptools_lite??

[Donald Stufft]

On October 21, 2015 at 3:13:11 PM, Chris Barker (chris.barker at noaa.gov) wrote:
>  
> replace all your "import setuptools" with "import setuptool_lite" would be
> clear what the intent was -- i.e. not YET ANOTHER brand new build system...
>  

Moving from one “one true build system” to another “one true build system” is unlikely. The problem is that the kind of things people want to do on the build side are basically infinite and trying to make a single tool to rule them all has historically boiled down to either the tool is good at one particular use case and really really terrible for every other use case OR it’s just terrible (but not really really terrible!) at every use case.

A far better approach IMO is the one we’re taking. Define standard *formats* and let end users select whatever tool they want to create things that adhere to that format. This lets people create really focused tools for particular use cases, you can have a dead simple one for pure python things that never need to worry about the complexity of building C libraries (or even the complexity of needing to interface with Fortran) but the people who do need the extra complexity can use tools that enable them to do that complexity in a sane way.

-----------------
Donald Stufft
PGP: 0x6E3CBCE93372DCFA // 7C6B 7C5D 5E2B 6356 A926 F04F 6E3C BCE9 3372 DCFA