[Distutils] setuptools for people behind a firewall

[Paul Moore]

I've just had a look at the new documentation for setuptools. I've not
read it all in detail yet, but one thing struck me regarding the
"automatically download dependencies" feature.

It isn't going to work for people (like me) stuck behind a firewall
that Python doesn't support (Windows NTLM based firewall). Obviously,
setuptools is never going to be able to resolve a situation like this,
nor would I expect it to. But can I suggest two possible changes to
make it easier for people with limited internet access?

1. A "manual download" mode, where setuptools lists the files which it
wants you to obtain, and then leaves it to you how you get them. I'm
not sure how plausible this would be, given the necessarily iterative
process involved in resolving dependencies, but even a little help
would be useful (a report of unresolved dependencies when run with a
--no-download flag would be the most basic help).

2. A way of specifying an external command to use to download files
over HTTP. This would (for example) allow me to use curl, which does
support HTLM proxies, rather than relying on Python's built-in HTTP
support, which doesn't.

Regards,
Paul.