setuptools without unexpected downloads

[Paul Boddie]

On 26 Sep, 13:44, "Diez B. Roggisch" <de... at nospam.web.de> wrote:
>
> Do I understand that correctly that essentially you're saying: if you want
> your software released for a certain distro, package it up for it the way
> it's supposed to be? I can understand that and said so myself - but then,
> the whole setuptools-debate has come to an end.

Yes, my preference is to install software as native packages, although
I'm generally spoilt by the selection of packages available and the
availability of packaging for current and previous versions of a lot
of Python packages for my system. One problem with promoting system/
native packages is that it can be difficult for people not using the
target platform to actually build the packages themselves, thus
requiring some kind of package maintainer role to be filled by another
person, but generally any demand on a given system for a package leads
to that role being filled by a community member fairly quickly. And
there are some existing semi-automated solutions, too, such as stdeb
and the distutils bdist_rpm option.

Paul

P.S. Of course, the package maintainer problem manifests itself most
prominently on Windows where you often see people asking for pre-built
packages or installers.