[Python-Dev] PEP 376 - Open questions

[P.J. Eby]

At 11:20 PM 7/8/2009 -0400, Eric Smith wrote:
>P.J. Eby wrote:
>>>ISTM that the problem that it solves is uninstall in the absence of
>>>the original installer.
>>Or uninstall where the installer is "setup.py install", actually.
>
>I think we need to move away from "setup.py install". It's the 
>antithesis of static metadata.

Please note that that's entirely out of scope for the PEP at hand.

That being said, the rest of your proposal is strikingly similar to a 
proposal I previously floated on the distutils-sig for a concept 
called BUILDS.  The main difference is that I suggested that the spec 
should include a standard interface for running build operations that 
would produce the manifest (equivalent to your setup.info), and that 
distutils and setuptools should provide setup.py commands to generate 
said manifest, to allow for a seamless transition.

There was very little comment on the proposal, perhaps because it 
involves a lot of work that most people are sane enough not to sign 
up for.  ;-)

(Or more to the point, it's the sort of thing that never gets off the 
ground for design by consensus.  The best way to make something like 
your proposal to happen is to go off and build it, and get it to take 
over.  If it can't win substantial market share on its own merits, it 
probably doesn't deserve to be blessed as a standard.)