[Distutils] disappointed by setupTools

[Pierre Imbaud]

Bob Ippolito wrote:

> On 10/16/06, Pierre Imbaud <pierre at saiph.com> wrote:
> 
>>Im a little bit disappointed by setupTools. Not that much the tool itself,
>>than the learning curve.
>>Maybe the problem at hand is far from simple, and thats what makes the
>>solution so intricate.
>>http://peak.telecommunity.com/DevCenter/setuptools: this document is
>>100 pages long! (by page I mean: full screen).
>>easyInstall is 40 pages.
>>I spent about 3 days to figure out what goes where. And I realize Im
>>not done.
>>Yet the documentation is remarkable, great presentation, text is
>>precise and clear, when U read it. Makes U feel guilty U dont find
>>what U lookin for, but U dont find it.
> 
> 
> The current documentation is a reference, not a tutorial. It's long
> because it's exhaustive. What's needed is different documentation for
> new users.
indeed
> 
> 
>>I just discovered scripts dont get installed directly (in
>>/usr/local/bin), instead a wrapper in installed, that calls the
>>script. So an extra file is involved, and extra code, every time the
>>script is called. Makes some overhead, and it breaks a simple
>>mechanism I use: my script is able to perform many actions, based on
>>its name (much like cp, mv and ln are the same executable). at
>>install, I need to make symlinks to the script, one per action, and
>>this was automated: this is broken by the wrapping. No big deal, just
>>makes things less simple.
>>Good tools have 2 qualities:
>>- When U need simple things, its easy to use.
>>- When U need more sophisticated things, U dont need to give up the
>>   tool for a more powerful one: just have to use extra features.
>>Python is a wonderful illustration of this.
>>While setupTools obviously provides the latter, I consider it fails on
>>the former.
>>I decided to use setupTools after reading, and failing to understand,
>>distutils. setupTools seemed both more powerful and simpler.
>>Probably this choice will save me some trouble later. Im not sure it
>>helped so far.
> 
> 
> It doesn't work because you're doing it the wrong way. If you want to
> see what a command was invoked as, use sys.argv[0]... that's what it's
> for.
Thats what I did, thats the obvious way. But with this wrapper policy,
sys.argv[0] is the wrapper. to get to the module name, I needed __file__!
> 
> Also, you don't *have* to use entry points to make scripts (though
> it's generally better to)... the scripts kwarg to setup works the same
> way that it does for distutils.
> 
> -bob
> _______________________________________________
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> 

Thanks both of U for your answers. The tool is handy indeed...
once U climbed the somewhat steep learning curve.