[Distutils] Improving distutils vs redesigning it (was people want CPAN)

[Robert Kern]

On 2009-11-11 17:18 PM, David Cournapeau wrote:
> On Thu, Nov 12, 2009 at 6:59 AM, Tarek Ziadé<ziade.tarek at gmail.com>  wrote:
>
>>
>> And let's drop the backward compat issues in these discussions, so we
>> don't burn out
>> in details.
>
> That's the part I don't understand. If backward compatibility is not a
> concern, why keeping distutils ? If you change the command and
> Distribution class design, what remains of the original code  ? You
> are changing the API and the implementation (which are quite tangled
> with each other in distutils case), almost none of the original code
> would remain.
>
> It really feels to me like you are getting the pain of backward
> compatibility without the gains. What am I missing ?

I think Tarek wants to avoid the Second System Effect and related problems.

   http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Second-system_effect
   http://www.joelonsoftware.com/articles/fog0000000069.html

While that is usually a good habit to cultivate and a good default position, 
it's not an unyielding law or anything. You have think deeply about whether the 
code is the way it is because it contains useful knowledge or if it is just 
constrained by ossified decisions from the past. I tend to think that the useful 
knowledge can be extracted from distutils and applied well in a rewrite. The 
most important useful knowledge is the extension building flags, and I think you 
have done a good job of transplanting that information into the entirely 
different build system of SCons.

-- 
Robert Kern

"I have come to believe that the whole world is an enigma, a harmless enigma
  that is made terrible by our own mad attempt to interpret it as though it had
  an underlying truth."
   -- Umberto Eco