[Distutils] PEP for specifying build dependencies

[Paul Moore]

On 11 May 2016 at 01:39, Brett Cannon <brett at python.org> wrote:
> Donald, Nathaniel, and I have finished our proposed PEP for specifying a
> projects' build dependencies. The PEP is being kept at
> https://github.com/brettcannon/build-deps-pep, so if you find spelling
> mistakes and grammatical errors please feel free to send a PR to fix them.
>
> The only open issue in the PEP at the moment is the bikeshedding topic of
> what to name the sub-section containing the requirements: `[package.build]`
> or `[package.build-system]` (we couldn't reach consensus among the three of
> us on this). Otherwise the three of us are rather happy with the way the PEP
> has turned out and look forward to this being the first step towards
> allowing projects to customize their build process better!

+1 on the PEP as a whole - good work, all of you!

On the requirements sub-section, I have a mild preference for
[package.build-system] (but a stronger preference for not
bikeshedding, so I'm OK with either :-))

One thought, I understand that many projects assume they can import
particular Python modules in setup.py (numpy is a common one AIUI, for
getting the C header location). Would it be worth specifically calling
that out as a legitimate usage (it's not just to define the tools you
need to do the build, but also to specify the build environment in
general) and giving an example?

Paul