[Tutor] Percentage of installations without setuptools (Was if __name__=='__main__' ...)

[Steven D'Aprano]

On Fri, Aug 11, 2017 at 02:35:00PM +0200, Thomas Güttler wrote:

> How high is the percentage of python installation which don't have 
> setuptools?
> 
> I have no clue. Is it 5%, 10%, 15% ...?
> 
> I know there is no definite answer to this question. But you can guess this 
> better than me.

Somewhere between 0.1% and 99.9%.

For what little it is worth, out of the 9 versions of Python I have 
installed on my personal machines, setuptools is installed for 4 of 
them. On work machines, 2 out of 5 have setuptools installed. So in 
total, 6 out of 14 Python installations I have access to include 
setuptools. So 57% *don't* have setup tools.

Really Thomas, why do you care? If you want to require setuptools for 
your packages, go right ahead. If you want to tell people that using 
setuptools is the best choice, or the most popular choice, or the 
smartest choice, do so.

Just don't say it is the "default choice" because that is silly. The 
whole purpose of something being *default* is so that you DON'T have to 
make a choice. Obviously that doesn't apply to choosing a packaging 
library, and especially not to choosing a packaging language which may 
not even be present. Even if its only missing 1% of the time.

As a third-party author, the sorts of people who don't have setuptools 
installed either won't be installing your software at all, or will be 
installing it from source.


-- 
Steve