[Distutils] comparison of configuration languages

[Ethan Furman]

I just found this on StackOverflow:

   http://stackoverflow.com/a/648487/208880

tl;dr
-----

 > Recently I was working upon a project and I realised that I wanted to
 > have conditionals inside my configuration file [...]
 >
 > I didn't want to write a mini-language, because unless I did it very
 > carefully I couldn't allow the flexibility that would be useful.
 >
 > Instead I decided that I'd have two forms:  If the file started with
 > "#!" and was executable I'd parse the result of running it; otherwise
 > I'd read it as-is

That approach seems like a win-win: the plain-vanilla static file can be 
promoted as best-practice, yet we have a fall-back for the complicated 
and edge cases.

--
~Ethan~