[Python-Dev] API for the new sysconfig module

[Nick Coghlan]

On Sun, Dec 12, 2010 at 11:42 PM, Antoine Pitrou <solipsis at pitrou.net> wrote:
>> I really like that much better than Java-like accessor functions.
>
> Do you actually use sysconfig yourself? It's quite a specialized
> module, and I don't think API elegance arguments have a great weight
> here.

I would also like those advocating replacement of a tried and tested
API with "oh, you can just use a single function for it" to rewrite
distutils2 and the other tools that currently used distutils.sysconfig
based on their "single function" approach before *anything* gets
touched.

This is not an API that was invented on a whim. It is
well-established, with existing use cases that are essential to the
wider Python ecosystem, and are more easily managed on some Linux
distributions if they don't involve a dependency on distutils.
Proposing to throw it away in favour of an ill-defined single function
that indiscriminately mixes system data with metadata about that data
because some people that don't even use the module find it
aesthetically displeasing seems... unwise.

Regards,
Nick.

-- 
Nick Coghlan   |   ncoghlan at gmail.com   |   Brisbane, Australia