[Distutils] Dependency on ‘pkg_resources’ only (not Setuptools) (was: latest setuptools appears to require six in a breaking way)

[Ben Finney]

Donald Stufft <donald at stufft.io> writes:

> Pip itself does not depend on setuptools though we _do_ depend on
> pkg_resources […]

For those confused about what that means: The ‘pkg_resources’ package is
separate once installed, but is currently only distributed as part of
Setuptools.

So it's reasonable to declare a dependency on ‘pkg_resources’, yet that
dependency cannot be satisfied by Pip without installing the entire
Setuptools distribution.

The issue <URL:https://github.com/pypa/setuptools/issues/863> requests
this to be fixed, but AFAIK no changes have been implemented yet.

-- 
 \         “I think Western civilization is more enlightened precisely |
  `\     because we have learned how to ignore our religious leaders.” |
_o__)                                                —Bill Maher, 2003 |
Ben Finney