[Distutils] setup_requires for dev environments

[Paul Moore]

On 17 March 2015 at 11:38, Donald Stufft <donald at stufft.io> wrote:
>> OK, cool. So bdist_wheel to write a pydist.json into the wheel, and
>> then I guess wheel install (and pip) will just pick it up and dump it
>> in the dist-info folder because they do that anyway. Sounds easy
>> enough.
>
> I would also modify pip to start using it as part of the validation of
> this PEP (inside of a PR). That should “close the gap” and say “hey look
> we have a Proof of Concept here of this all working”.

I'm still not clear what you expect pip to *do* with the metadata.
It's just data, there's no functionality specified in the PEP.

>> Which only leaves the question of how users specify the metadata. My
>> feeling is that anything that isn't already covered by arguments to
>> setup() should be specified declaratively. That may be in setup.cfg,
>> but ini format may be a PITA for some of the more structured data. I
>> can have a think about that…
>>
>
> I would personally declare it inside of setup.py like everything else,
> yea setup.py is gross and unfun in 2015, however I think having two
> different locations for metadata inside of setuptools based on what era
> of spec that metadata came from is going to be super confusing for end
> users.

OK, that makes sense. But that involves setuptools hacking, which I'm
not touching with a bargepole :-)

Paul