[Python-Dev] "setuptools has divided the Python community"
P.J. Eby
pje at telecommunity.com
Wed Mar 25 16:00:48 CET 2009
At 07:40 AM 3/25/2009 -0700, Guido van Rossum wrote:
>Well, sorry, but this complex layered interdependent architecture is
>one of the *causes* of confusion -- apart from you nobody knows what
>is what exactly,
I'll pick a minor nit here... buildout, pip, and a wide variety of
other tools and frameworks out there wouldn't exist if I were really
the only person who knew "what's what". And I believe most of those
people will be at the summit.
That having been said, the setuptools documentation definitely sucks
for the casual reader or curious observer, as opposed to those who
have serious itches to scratch in the area of dependencies or
plugins. Combine that with the practical-but-impure choices I made
in easy_install to get *something* working, and you have a recipe for
the current situation.
pkg_resources, for example, is only bundled with setuptools because
it couldn't go in the stdlib when it was written. easy_install,
OTOH, is bundled with setuptools because *setuptools* isn't in the
stdlib! (And of course, both use pkg_resources.)
So ironically, setuptools is bundled in the way that it is, precisely
*because* there's no support for dependencies in the stdlib... and
nicely illustrates why smaller libraries (and less bundling) is a *good* thing.
More information about the Python-Dev
mailing list