[Distutils] Package install failures in 2.6.3 - setuptools vs Distribute

[Tarek Ziadé]

On Mon, Oct 5, 2009 at 1:30 PM, Ronald Oussoren <ronaldoussoren at mac.com> wrote:
>>Nobody will adopt it until they are forced to. This unfortunate bug
>>means people are forced to quicker than expected. I don't think that's
>>an actual problem.
>
> This is a problem, it means 2.6.3 is not a simple drop-in replacement for 2.6.2 but requires the replacement of another component as well.  That can be a problem in organizations with strict configuration management where you cannot install new software without going to lots of red tape (and that might involve lawyers when you install a new package instead of upgrading an existing one).

What is your solution ? Setuptools is not part of the standard library
and monkey-patch Distutils.
Its development has been discontinued for over a year.

Everytime Distutils is changed for anything, wether it's a bug fix or
not, Setuptools can be broken.

Now I realize that some folks wants Distutils to be aware of that and
be backward-compatible with
Setuptools monkey-patches ?

If that so, its means that Distutils can't be fixed and its code can't
be changed at all,
if Setuptools is not changed in the meantime. We can't force the
Setuptools maintainer
to do so.

Which package is supposely on the top of which one ?

A drop in replacement from 2.6.2 to 2.6.3 probably breaks some other
softwares out there
that are monkey patching some internals of Python, and the way to go
is to fix those package.

At the end, some folks here sounds like it's Distutils fault if
Setuptools is broken,
and it can't be simply because Setuptools is not maintained anymore
and monkey patches
Distutils.

Like for the svn 1.6 compat problem we had earlier this year,
this problem is a few line changes in Setuptools, it's an 1 hour work.
If your company upgrades to Python 2.6.3 it can also upgrade to an
hypothetical Setuptools 0.6c..10 ?

Tarek

-- 
Tarek Ziadé | http://ziade.org | オープンソースはすごい! | 开源传万世，因有你参与