[Python-Dev] addressing distutils inability to track file dependencies

[Guido van Rossum]

> May I humbly propose that this task should be automated?  Tools like
> makedepend have been invented and reinvented many times over
> precisely because it's too error-prone for humans to maintain that
> information manually.  Switching from Make's syntax to Python's
> syntax won't make that task substantially easier.

Unfortunately it's also darn tooting hard to do a good job of
discovering dependencies, which is why there is still no standard tool
that does this.  Makedepend tries, but is still hard to use.

--Guido van Rossum (home page: http://www.python.org/~guido/)