[Python-Dev] need info for externally maintained modules PEP

["Martin v. Löwis"]

Phillip J. Eby wrote:
> I was hoping that we had reached a point where setup.py could simply
> become the One Obvious Way to do it, in which case the One Obvious Way
> to bundle formerly-external libraries would be to bundle their setup
> scripts.

Well, setup.py cannot (yet?) replace the other mechanisms. It is
certainly the default, yes.

> Of course it can, and that will certainly solve the issues for packages
> with dependencies on ctypes, ElementTree, and setuptools.  But I was
> hoping for a more modular approach, one that would be more amenable to
> the needs of external library maintainers, and of system packagers who
> split even the core stdlib into multiple packages.  Those packagers will
> have to figure out what parts of the new setup.py to extract and what to
> keep in order to do their splitting.  And the people who develop the
> libraries will have to maintain two unrelated setup.py files.

I can't envision how that would work, or what problems it would solve.
Hence, I personally can't work on any of this.

System packagers already have mechanisms for splitting the Python
distribution into several packages. They typically run the entire
build process, building all modules, and then put the various files
into different packages. I don't think they have ever asked for better
support of this process, and I doubt that additional setup.py will
help them - they just apply the process that the where using all
the time to the new release, and it will continue to work fine.

Regards,
Martin