[Numpy-discussion] setuptools/distutils merger & numpy.distutils

[Daniele Nicolodi]

On 06/09/2020 11:28, Ralf Gommers wrote:
> On Sun, Sep 6, 2020 at 9:50 AM Daniele Nicolodi <daniele at grinta.net>
>     This may be bigger endeavor, but wouldn't it be possible to extend
>     setuptools interfaces in a way that plugging in the fortran support does
>     not require monkey patching or accessing the implementation internals?
> 
> Probably not, since distutils really doesn't have much of a design, or
> separation between API and implementation.

I was under the impression that one of the reasons why distutils is
being deprecated in favor of setuptools is to change this and evolve the
code into a better form, not to just move the code around.

>     By the way, how is Cython affected by this? Cython also distributes an
>     extension to (the module formerly know as) distutils to transparently
>     compile extensions written in Cython. Could the efforts toward
>     multi-language support in distutils be coordinated with the Cython
>     maintainers?
> 
> Cython.Distutils is a few hundred lines of code, numpy.distutils is
> 20,000 lines of code. I don't think Cython will have much problems adapting.

I'm well aware of that, however I was only referring to Fortran support
here, which may be something valuable to merge upstream. And Cython also
injects the support for a different language into distutils/setuptools,
thus maybe a common approach could be envisioned, maybe more robust than
the current one. I haven't looked at the code, though.

Cheers,
Dan