distutils alternatives?

[John Roth]

I believe that there was some thought at one time
to doing something like this. It eventually evolved
into PyPI as a first step. I haven't heard of anyone
working on the next step, though.

Distutils does what it does (and I won't say
adequately - I had to write a program to create
the distutils setup.py for PyFIT). I'd think that
putting a separate layer on top to handle multiple
downloads and installs would be a better approach
than attempting to integrate it all into distutils.

John Roth

"Lonnie Princehouse" <finite.automaton at gmail.com> wrote in message
news:4b39d922.0407201509.12c9d43b at posting.google.com...
> I'm in a situation where I need to distribute several interdependent
> Python packages.  There are good reasons not to combine them all into
> one package.  Distutils doesn't seem to be able to bundle a
> heterogeneous mix of multiple packages and modules, and so I've
> currently got people launching three installers in the proper sequence
> in order to get software installed, which seems needlessly complicated
> and confusing.  There must be a better way.  What I really want is a
> way for the installer to automatically download and install
> dependencies...
>
> First, does anyone know of an alternative to distutils that does this?
>
> Second, this is exactly what Gentoo's Portage software does, except
> for Gentoo ebuilds instead of Python packages.  It also happens to be
> written in Python.  Can anyone more familiar with Portage's internals
> comment on the feasibility of harnessing emerge to work as a Python
> package installer/distributer for systems which aren't running Gentoo?
>  It is also foreseeable that something like this could be linked to
> PyPI, etc.