[Distutils] [Fwd: Re: Annoucing distribute project]

[Ian Bicking]

Tres Seaver wrote:
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> Greg Ewing wrote:
>> Guido van Rossum wrote:
>>
>>> Yeah, but *is* dropping backward compatibility an option here?
>> I'm not sure the concept of backward compatibility
>> makes sense here. The only kind of distutils replacement
>> I would be interested in would have a completely different
>> API, completely different structure and completely
>> different implementation. Anything less would fail to
>> fix the problems we want to fix.
>>
>> Given that, what would it even *mean* for the new tool
>> to be backward compatible with distutils?
> 
> I think a tool which was willing to fake being distutils enough to
> extract information from existing 'setup()' calls would probably be
> enough, myself, so that:
> 
>  $ python <bbb_extractor_script>.py setup.py
> 
> would create the equivalent of PKG_INFO / EGG_INFO on disk, where it
> could then be used to drive the new installer.

pyinstall does exactly this, like:

   python -c "import setuptools; __file__='setup.py'; 
execfile('setup.py')" egg_info

well, it's slightly more involved, because the Package.egg-info/ 
directory is written in the base of the package, which might be 
./Package.egg-info, or ./src/Package.egg-info -- to avoid this I add 
--egg-base=pyinstall-egg-info so that the egg info always goes in the 
same location.  Anyway, setuptools already fakes distutils in exactly 
the way you describe.

-- 
Ian Bicking : ianb at colorstudy.com : http://blog.ianbicking.org