[Distutils] The problem with Setuptools on Python 3.

[Lennart Regebro]

On Mon, Apr 20, 2009 at 21:01, P.J. Eby <pje at telecommunity.com> wrote:
> Look, if you want to fork setuptools to not depend on itself, knock yourself
> out.  I sure can't stop you.

Well, unless somebody can come up with an alternative... But I have to
say I'm extremely reluctant to do so. And I think that my action
instead will be to abandon all further efforts of porting things to
Python 3. This is too much pain, takes to much time and doesn't lead
anywhere. I have since July wanted to port the zope.component
architecture to Python 3. I've put down weeks of work on it. Almost
*all* that work has been related to setuptools.

> It's simply that, from my POV, I'd rather not complicate the main branches
> with duplication to support Python 3, when ISTM that the Python-3-support
> bits could be isolated instead.

"Isolated"? What do you mean? If you have suggestions on how to solve
the problems I'm describing, can you please come forward with them,
I've asked several times already. All you do is say "no, no, no, no,
no", and "becasue". It isn't helpful.

> All that having been said, I'm not the one doing the port, so do what you
> think best.

No, because although you aren't the one doing the port, you still are
the main setuptools maintainer, and this will need to merged. Soon. As
I mentioned above, the fact that setuptools doesn't have good Python 3
support is a major hindrance for Python 3 acceptance.

>>  For all other
>> packages it's recommended that only source distributions are done
>> unless you have c-extensions.
>
> Recommended by whom, for what purpose?

Everybody, for all purposes.

> For end-user convenience.  A large number of people installing setuptools
> are not installing it because they are personally interested in it, but
> because something else they want uses it.

Yes? And again you don't explain how this leads to you conclusion.
Eggs are not easier to install, on the contrary, I have tried and
failed a couple of times, and ended up using the source install
instead. It's easy to install. You download, unpack, run python
setup.py install, like any other package.

-- 
Lennart Regebro: Python, Zope, Plone, Grok
http://regebro.wordpress.com/
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