[Distutils] People want CPAN :-)

[Kaelin Colclasure]

On Nov 6, 2009, at 3:54 PM, Tarek Ziadé wrote:

> 2009/11/7 Kaelin Colclasure <kaelin at acm.org>:
> [...]
>> As both a CPAN contributor and a recent PyPI contributor I think I  
>> can speak
>> to this:
>>
>> When I packaged my first Perl module for CPAN distribution, there  
>> was no
>> question about how to go about it. There was a clear recipe and it  
>> worked
>> without a hitch the first time I tried.
>>
>> When I recently packaged my first Python module for PyPI I was a bit
>> dismayed to learn that easy_install is just one of several ways to
>> disseminate Python code. The documentation is fragmented... The  
>> stuff I read
>> on easy_install basically assumed you already knew all about  
>> distutils, and
>> I eventually had to reorganize my code from a simple module to a  
>> package
>> just to get a few non-code files to be pulled in by the install. A  
>> less
>> persistent would-be contributor might have given up in frustration.
>>
>> I joined this mailing list instead, and got my package working with  
>> some
>> kind assistance. :-) But CPAN was just easier to contribute to.
>
> What was in particular, the pieces missing in Distutils (doc+code)
> that made you use Setuptools (doc+code) ?

Since I bootstrapped the environment I used to learn Python with  
easy_install, I naturally went straight to the easy_install docs to  
learn how to give back. I wasn't even aware of this separate thing  
called distutils until I read about it in the easy_install (err  
setuptools) documentation (sic).

-- Kaelin