[Python-Dev] Status of packaging in 3.3

[Chris McDonough]

On 06/21/2012 11:37 AM, PJ Eby wrote:
>
> On Jun 21, 2012 11:02 AM, "Zooko Wilcox-O&apos;Hearn" <zooko at zooko.com
> <mailto:zooko at zooko.com>> wrote:
>  >
>  > Philip J. Eby provisionally approved of one of the patches, except for
>  > some specific requirement that I didn't really understand how to fix
>  > and that now I don't exactly remember:
>  >
>  > http://mail.python.org/pipermail/distutils-sig/2009-January/010880.html
>  >
>
> I don't remember either; I just reviewed the patch and discussion, and
> I'm not finding what the holdup was, exactly.  Looking at it now, it
> looks to me like a good idea...  oh wait, *now* I remember the problem,
> or at least, what needs reviewing.
>
> Basically, the challenge is that it doesn't allow an .egg in a
> PYTHONPATH directory to take precedence over that *specific* PYTHONPATH
> directory.
>
> With the perspective of hindsight, this was purely a transitional
> concern, since it only *really* mattered for site-packages; anyplace
> else you could just delete the legacy package if it was a problem.  (And
> your patch works fine for that case.)
>
> However, for setuptools as it was when you proposed this, it was a
> potential backwards-compatibility problem.  My best guess is that I was
> considering the approach for 0.7...  which never got any serious
> development time.
>
> (It may be too late to fix the issue, in more than one sense.  Even if
> the problem ceased to be a problem today, nobody's going to re-evaluate
> their position on setuptools, especially if their position wasn't even
> based on a personal experience with the issue.)

A minor backwards incompat here to fix that issue would be appropriate, 
if only to be able to say "hey, that issue no longer exists" to folks 
who condemn the entire ecosystem based on that bug.  At least, that is, 
if there will be another release of setuptools.  Is that likely?

- C