[Python-Dev] Distutils and Distribute roadmap (and some words on Virtualenv, Pip)

[Tarek Ziadé]

On Thu, Oct 8, 2009 at 11:28 PM, Ned Deily <nad at acm.org> wrote:
[..]
> So, without some other intervention, users will continue to follow the
> instructions with those hundreds of packages (or on those thousands of
> websites) and manually or automatically try to install setuptools.

I think this will be in the hands of the projects developers : if they start to
use Distribute, they will start to document the way to install and use it,
and the word will spread eventually.

[..]
> Ultimately, to successfully migrate to Distribute is going to require a
> good understanding of the use cases for easy_install (primarily those of
> end users) and for the setuptools API (those of package developers).
> Those use cases should be documented somehow, either in the roadmap or a
> reference elsewhere.  This is especially true if your intentions are to
> deprecate the easy_install command in Distribute 0.7 and if APIs are
> going to change for package developers.  As Antoine points out, pip is
> not equivalent to easy_install.  BTW, keep in mind that today people
> also use easy_install to manage the installation of packages that do not
> use setuptools.

The choice to deprecate easy_install in 0.7 is done because the Pip project
is not far to meet all uses cases easy_install users have, and we're betting
on the fact that Pip is active and will be much more advanced that what
we could do with a 'new' refactored easy_install by the time 0.7 is ready.

meaning : why doing this work twice ?

> Thanks again for your hard work on this, Tarek!

Thanks for the advices

Tarek