[Distutils] About version discussion

[Harry Henry Gebel]

I was wondering if it might be a good idea to put a function in Distutils
that could query if the currently installed version has certain
abilities. Each ability could be assigned a name, and it could be
implemented very simply:

(in setup.py)

try:
  if not check_ability('a'):
    raise Exception # to be caught and reraised as SystemExit
except: # for versions of Distutils without check_ability(), or without 'a'
  raise SystemExit, 'This package requires a more recent version of Distutils'

(somewhere in the Distutils)

def check_ability(ability):
  ''' Return true if ability is supported by Distutils '''
  return ability in ['a', 'b', 'c']

-- 
Harry Henry Gebel, Senior Developer, Landon House SBS        ICQ# 76308382
West Dover Hundred, Delaware