[Distutils] Extracting distutils into setuptools

[Paul Moore]

I meant to include a link, sorry.
https://github.com/pfmoore/pylaunch/blob/master/build_zastub.py

On 28 September 2017 at 16:11, Paul Moore <p.f.moore at gmail.com> wrote:
> I use distutils to build a C program that embeds Python, for making
> standalone launchers. I'm not at all clear how I'd get all the
> information I needed to build a compatible Python (including the "find
> the appropriate C compiler" dance) manually - I'd probably end up with
> something that didn't work except with specific Python versions or
> setups.
>
> Having said that, I assume that the relevant APIs or equivalents would
> be exposed via a future setuptools that included distutils (as it
> would need them internally to build extensions). Alternatively, I'd
> support refactoring these aspects of distutils out into a standalone
> library.
>
> Paul
>
> On 28 September 2017 at 15:55, Daniel Holth <dholth at gmail.com> wrote:
>> Enscons uses parts of distutils to get compiler flags and so on but does not
>> use Extension() to do the actual compiling. There might be a cleaner way to
>> do it that I was not able to find. There could be a cleaner separation
>> between parts of distutils related to how Python itself was compiled and the
>> part that does the actual compiling. The sysconfig module attempts to do at
>> least part of this.
>>
>> distutils also knows about some compiler tricks like generating symbol
>> tables for Windows, that are not easy to re-use or invoke separately.
>> Someone could catalog these tricks and techniques and refactor the useful
>> ones into a reusable library. I don't have a great sense of how to do it.
>>
>> https://bitbucket.org/dholth/enscons/src/tip/enscons/cpyext.py?at=default&fileviewer=file-view-default
>>
>> On Wed, Sep 27, 2017 at 11:36 PM Nick Coghlan <ncoghlan at gmail.com> wrote:
>>>
>>> On 28 September 2017 at 06:00, xoviat <xoviat at gmail.com> wrote:
>>> > That's actually an interesting idea though: for Python 3.7 distutils ->
>>> > _distutils (and then setuptools is required for building). For/against?
>>>
>>> distutils works fine for its original purpose (building components for
>>> the system Python in Linux distros), so we still need to avoid
>>> breaking that. setuptools is only essential if you want full support
>>> for modern *Python* level packaging features (PEP 376 install
>>> metadata, venv compatibility, wheel files, etc), and a lot of Linux
>>> system components simply don't worry about those things, and rely on
>>> their system level equivalents instead (e.g. the RPM/deb databases,
>>> chroots and containers, RPM/deb files)
>>>
>>> However, what *could* be interesting is a proposal to move distutils
>>> to the "ensurepip" model, where rather than maintaining distutils
>>> directly as part of CPython, the CPython build process instead runs
>>> setuptools/distutils from a bundled wheel file. Doing that would
>>> entail having setuptools actually start installing a copy of distutils
>>> into site-packages: older CPython releases would ignore it by default
>>> (since the stdlib version would shadow it), while 3.7+ would offer
>>> either "python3 -m ensuredistutils" or "python3 -m ensuresetuptools"
>>> (bikeshed to be painted via the PEP process) to install the
>>> setuptools-provided version.
>>>
>>> I'm not claiming actually doing that would be particularly easy - I
>>> just think it's the most viable path to get us away from the current
>>> version coupling between the build infrastructure in distutils and the
>>> runtime support infrastructure in the rest of the standard library,
>>> and to avoid maintaining two distinct copies of distutils indefinitely
>>> (one in the stdlib, one in setuptools).
>>>
>>> That approach wouldn't even entail any *new* bundling at the CPython
>>> level, as while it's currently formally an implementation detail
>>> (pending potential removal in a post-PEP-517 world), setuptools is
>>> already bundled as part of the support infrastructure for ensurepip:
>>> https://github.com/python/cpython/tree/master/Lib/ensurepip/_bundled
>>>
>>> Cheers,
>>> Nick.
>>>
>>> --
>>> Nick Coghlan   |   ncoghlan at gmail.com   |   Brisbane, Australia
>>> _______________________________________________
>>> Distutils-SIG maillist  -  Distutils-SIG at python.org
>>> https://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/distutils-sig
>>
>>
>> _______________________________________________
>> Distutils-SIG maillist  -  Distutils-SIG at python.org
>> https://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/distutils-sig
>>