[Python-Dev] Raising objections (was: setuptools in the stdlib)
Walter Dörwald
walter at livinglogic.de
Wed Apr 19 08:22:13 CEST 2006
Anthony Baxter wrote:
> I'm not sure how people would prefer this be handled. I don't think we
> need to have a PEP for it - I don't see PEPs for ctypes, elementtree,
> pysqlite or cProfile, either.
If I'm not calling shared libraries from Python I can ignore ctypes. If
I'm not doing XML, I can ignore elementtree. If I'm not doing SQL I can
ignore pysqlite and if I'm not interested in profiling I can ignore
cProfile. But setuptools will potentially affect anyone that uses
third-party modules/packages.
And ctypes, elementtree and pysqlite are mature packages. setuptools
isn't even finished yet.
> I don't have a problem at all with setuptools going into the standard
> library. It adds a whole pile of extremely useful functionality
> (easy_install, in particular, is something that people have been
> asking for, constantly, for YEARS). Making it an additional install
> is just silly
>
> Sure, it's possible that some people with extremely complicated
> distutils scripts may find they need to update them.
Wouldn't I need at least have to change "from distutils.core import
setup" to "from setuptools import setup"? Or to something like:
try:
import ez_setup
except ImportError:
import distutils.core as tools
else:
ez_setup.use_setuptools()
import setuptools as tools
for backwards compatibility reasons?
> But the
> alternative to that is complete paralysis - and I can't say that the
> current state of distutils is at all something to make Python happy.
>
> I started refactoring some of the ugliness out of the internals of
> distutils last year, but was completely stymied by the demand that no
> existing setup.py scripts be broken. This means that the people who
> are experts with the current code are fine, but everyone else has to
> pay the price.
Servus,
Walter
More information about the Python-Dev
mailing list