[Distutils] What is the official position on distutils?

[Brett Cannon]

The discussion of Sylvain's proposed changes to distutils suggests that
there isn't a clear-cut agreement or position of this SIG -- and thus
Python -- on changes to distutils, its future, etc. Is there an official
position I'm not aware of? If not, could we get one so we know how to
handle any more proposed changes to distutils?

For me personally (and to start this conversation if necessary), I view
distutils as the package in the stdlib that handles building extension
modules in the stdlib for Python. That view means that if something doesn't
service that explicit goal then it shouldn't go into distutils. Now that we
are moving down the road towards making the build step configurable I'm
fine with saying that distutils is not expected to work for people other
than Python itself and others can use setuptools, enscons, or other
projects while we continue to improve the situation to where the build
system is just something you specify in pyproject.toml to generate your
wheel. IOW distutils is only exposed publicly because Python doesn't hide
anything, but making it useful for the general case of direct usage by
people is a non-goal of the package.
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