[Distutils] svn tagging setuptools command

[Ian Bicking]

Kevin Dangoor wrote:
> On 8/29/05, Ian Bicking <ianb at colorstudy.com> wrote:
> 
>>I expect I'll still want a entry point for all these that acts like
>>distutils.commands, but under a different name.  Then a command-packages
>>managing command (that's hard to parse ;) could use that to list
>>available command packages.  The command-packages managing command
>>itself would be installed globally.
> 
> 
> I have to wonder, though, how many commands is too many? And how many
> people will likely install enough packages to have that many commands?
> 
> I, personally, was really happy with how easy and transparent the use
> of an EntryPoint was for allowing people to use Testido's distutils
> command. I find it hard to imagine that there would be a truly
> unmanageable set of commands in a typical person's installation.

Personally I think there's too many already.  And SQLObject, for 
instance, would add 8.  Plus a constrained number of commands makes a 
package understandable through --help-commands.  If many (most?) of the 
commands are applicable to a package, package maintainers will have to 
keep a separate document just listing the relevent commands.

The other option might be to allow commands to opt out of being 
listed/available.  For instance, if build_clib noticed there were no C 
libraries.

My vision of how it would work with command-packages would be like:

   python setup.py plugins --list
   # get a list of installed and uninstalled plugins, using entry points
   # to discover commands
   python setup.py plugins --remove=EggName
   python setup.py plugins --add=EggName
   # these change setup.cfg

I'm not sure whether you'd specify eggs, eggs+entry points, modules, or 
what.  Or any of the above.  I still have to remind myself how the 
underlying stuff works.

-- 
Ian Bicking  /  ianb at colorstudy.com  / http://blog.ianbicking.org