[Distutils] YAGNI extras and tests_require

[Jorge Vargas]

On 10/22/06, Jim Fulton <jim at zope.com> wrote:
>
> I'd like to call "Ya aint gonna need it" on the extras feature of setuptools.
>
actually I find it as a very interesting way of implementing a plugin
architecture.

in fact I was thinking of trying it out with a project I'm working on
like an hour ago.

I have 2 main objects Sources and Bots (aka interfaces) and then I
have Sources as in MysqldbSource ,SQLObjectSource,
SQLAlchemySource,etc. and Bots as in JabberBot, GoogleBot, MSNBot.

Also eventually people will subclass std Sources to get their own, set
of data "publish" on the system

As you can see a "basic" instalation of this will be at least 1 bot
and 1 source then everything else will get installed as optional
packages.

> As far as I can tell, extras are just a way to avoid fine-grained packages.
> Is this benefit worth the complexity?  I don't think so.  It violates
> "There's Only One Way To Do It" and increases the complexity of setuptools.
>
> Setuptools is wonderful but it is complex.  I think it would be helpful to
> make it simpler and I really don't see a need for extras.
>
I aggree on that, I have been around it for some time now and I'm
still confused :)

> I think a similar argument could be made against the tests_require feature.
> (In the presence of the extras feature, it's puzzling that this isn't
> handled as an extra.)
>
I have never use/seen that one.

> Jim
>
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