[Python-Dev] "setuptools has divided the Python community"

[David Cournapeau]

On Fri, Mar 27, 2009 at 9:49 PM, M.-A. Lemburg <mal at egenix.com> wrote:

> I think that esp. the bdist_* commands help developers a lot by
> removing the need to know how to build e.g. RPMs or Windows
> installers and let distutils deal with it.

I think it is a big dangerous to build rpm/deb without knowing how to
build them, because contrary to windows .exe, rpm/deb install things
system-wide, and you could easily break something. I don't think you
can build deb/rpm without knowing quite a lot about them.

> (*) I've had a go at this a few months ago and then found out
> that the egg format itself is not documented anywhere. As a result
> you have to dig deep into setuptools to find out which files
> are needed and where. That's something that needs to change
> (Tarek is already working on a PEP for this, AFAIK).

It is "documented" here:

http://peak.telecommunity.com/DevCenter/EggFormats

But as said in the preambule, people are not supposed to rely on this.
I for once would be really happy if  I could build eggs without
setuptools - for example to build eggs from scons, scripts, etc...

cheers,

David