[Distutils] pip vs easy_install vs distutils2

[Tarek Ziadé]

On Sun, May 30, 2010 at 11:17 PM, P.J. Eby <pje at telecommunity.com> wrote:
> At 09:12 PM 5/29/2010 +0200, Tarek Ziadé wrote:
>>
>> > For packages with complex build requirements or distutils extensions
>> > (e.g.
>> > numpy), this is unlikely to happen any time soon.
>> >
>> > Conversely, for packages where this *is* the case, the current distutils
>> > is
>> > adequate, and having a bootstrapper that can install them would be a
>> > win.
>>
>> I don't understand where the win is in this case.
>
> That packages with complex build requirements will still work.  See above.

Ok. Well yes, it'll be years before distutils2 is used in most projects.

But, making new projects and converted projects avoid any code in setup.py
when possible, thanks to PEP 345 and what we plan next to staticaly
describe a package
(see http://hg.python.org/distutils2/file/tip/docs/design/wiki.rst) is
the path I would like to follow.

Now for C extensions and the likes, it's still very fuzzy because I
don't think this part can always be
handled through configuration. Some people have their own recipes to
build extensions so..

We are working on the configure command for the GSOC (creates a
configure file build/install can use),
but automating/using a build environment on target systems is probably
not a first citizen in Distutils.

Maybe this part should be separated completely from setup.py, with a
specific handling when a project is installed.

Tarek

-- 
Tarek Ziadé | http://ziade.org