[Distutils] Time for a setuptools_lite??

[Robert Collins]

On 22 October 2015 at 11:33, Chris Barker <chris.barker at noaa.gov> wrote:
> On Wed, Oct 21, 2015 at 2:53 PM, Paul Moore <p.f.moore at gmail.com> wrote:
>>
>>  As I've already said, we have a plan for that, it's
>> just happening slowly (apparently too slowly for some people, but
>> rather than helping with it they seem happier to propose alternative
>> approaches that we've typically considered in the past and discarded,
>
>
> I'm not exactly sure who (or which proposals) that was aimed at, but my
> idea, at least is not an alternative approach at all -- it's small idea for
> how to help get there, sooner than later.
>
> It seems the plan is to:
>
> finish hammering out the spec.
>
> Wait for _someone_ to make a new build system.
>
> Then wait how long? decades? for the entire user community to go to some new
> build system(s).
>
> Then we can finally deprecate the cruft of setuptools.
>
> Actually -- I like that plan -- and I'll probably be one of the early folks
> to jump on the bandwagon of the new build system.
>
> But in the meantime, a way to get my project to build without the setuptools
> cruft would be a nice option.
>
> BTW -- this is not just about letting pip work with more than one build
> system -- it's also about letting more than one package manage work with the
> existing (and other future) build systems.
>
> In conda, for instance, the convention is to call:
>
> python setup.py intstall.
>
> It turns out that now, we _should_ be calling:
>
> pip install ./
>
> to actually get the right thing done. Really?
>
> A setuptools lite would do the right thing with "setup.py install"
>
> Hmm, now that I think about it, maybe I can just banish setuptools from my
> setup.py, stick with distutils, and then make sure to use pip to actually
> invoke anything -- so it will inject setuptools, but only use the bits we
> need....
>
> I'll have to try that.....

You won't gain anything from that. distutils doesn't track installed
files either. You *must* use 'pip install .' or 'setup.py bdist_wheel'
+ 'pip install .' with the current ecosystem state,

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