[Python-Dev] "setuptools has divided the Python community"

[Eric Smith]

M.-A. Lemburg wrote:
> On 2009-03-27 04:19, Guido van Rossum wrote:
>> - keep distutils, but start deprecating certain higher-level
>> functionality in it (e.g. bdist_rpm)
>> - don't try to provide higher-level functionality in the stdlib, but
>> instead let third party tools built on top of these core APIs compete
> 
> Should this be read as:
> 
> - remove bdist_rpm from the stdlib and let it live on PyPI
> 
> ?

As one of the people who proposed this, I think it means: move 
bdist_rpm, bdist_msi, etc. out of distutils, but provide some of them 
with the standard Python installation. I'm certain that as part of the 
refactoring and simplification of distutils we'll gradually move the 
existing bdist_* commands into separate, stand-alone "things" (scripts, 
callable modules, or something). We'll need to do this if only for 
testing, so we may as well make them work.

> Instead of removing such functionality, I think we should add
> more support for standard packaging formats to distutils, e.g.
> bdist_deb, bdist_pkg, etc.

Agreed.

> And for eggs, there should be a standard bdist_egg, written against
> the core distutils APIs (*), creating archives which other Python
> package managers can then use in whatever way they seem fit.

Agreed.

> Just please don't tie eggs to one specific package manager,
> e.g. having to install setuptools just to run eggified packages
> is just plain wrong. The format itself doesn't require this and
> neither should the software shipped with those eggs.

I think that whatever we produce will need to be supported by the 
standalone version of the installer portion that will be backported and 
separately available.