[Distutils] Time for a setuptools_lite??

[Paul Moore]

On 21 October 2015 at 20:32, Chris Barker <chris.barker at noaa.gov> wrote:
> I have no idea how we can get from here to there cleanly, but it would it be
> that big a deal for pip to look for either setuptools or setuptools_lite,
> and neither are there, inject setuptools_lite.

Yes it would, unfortunately. The problem is that setup.py is not
introspectable - pip simply can't "detect" what is imported (short of
fragile approaches such as searching the source for
"import\s*setuptools$" or something) without running it. So pip just
unilaterally injects setuptools at the moment, even if it's already
there.

One of the points about having a setup_requires element in static
metadata is precisely so that pip *can* introspect what build system
is in use and not have to make assumptions/inject.

Paul