[Python-Dev] Status of packaging in 3.3

[Tarek Ziadé]

On 6/21/12 7:49 PM, PJ Eby wrote:
> On Thu, Jun 21, 2012 at 1:20 PM, Tarek Ziadé <tarek at ziade.org 
> <mailto:tarek at ziade.org>> wrote:
>
>     telling us no one that is willing to maintain setuptools is able
>     to do so. (according to him)
>
>
> Perhaps there is some confusion or language barrier here: what I said 
> at that time was that the only people who I already *knew* to be 
> capable of taking on full responsibility for *continued development* 
> of setuptools, were not available/interested in the job, to my knowledge.
>
> Specifically, the main people I had in mind were Ian Bicking and/or 
> Jim Fulton, both of whom had developed extensions to or significant 
> chunks of setuptools' functionality themselves, during which they 
> demonstrated exemplary levels of understanding both of the code base 
> and the wide variety of scenarios in which that code base had to 
> operate.  They also both demonstrated conservative, user-oriented 
> design choices, that made me feel comfortable that they would not do 
> anything to disrupt the existing user base, and that if they made any 
> compatibility-breaking changes, they would do so in a way that avoided 
> disruption.  (I believe I also gave Philip Jenvey as an example of 
> someone who, while not yet proven at that level, was someone I 
> considered a good potential candidate as well.)
>
> This was not a commentary on anyone *else's* ability, only on my 
> then-present *knowledge* of clearly-suitable persons and their 
> availability, or lack thereof.
Yes, so I double-checked my sentence, I think we are in agreement: you 
would not let folks that *wanted* to maintain it back then, do it.  
Sorry if this was not clear to you.

But let's forget about this, old story I guess.


>
> I would guess that the pool of qualified persons is even larger now, 
> but the point is moot: my issue was never about who would "maintain" 
> setuptools, but who would *develop* it.
>
> And I expect that we would at this point agree that future 
> *development* of setuptools is not something either of us are seeking. 
> Rather, we should be seeking to develop tools that can properly 
> supersede it.
>
> This is why I participated in Distutils-SIG discussion of the various 
> packaging PEPs, and hope to see more of them there.
>
I definitely agree, and I think your feedback on the various PEPs were 
very important.

My point is just that, we could (and *should*) in my opinion, merge back 
setuptools and distribute, just to have a py3-enabled setuptools that is 
in maintenance mode,

and work on the new stuff in packaging besides it.

the merged setuptools/distribute project could also be the place were we 
start to do the work to be compatible with the new standards

That's my proposal.


Tarek
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