[Distutils] waf can be used to compile Python extension modules

[Paul Moore]

On 21 March 2014 13:46, Daniel Holth <dholth at gmail.com> wrote:
> It mostly has to implement egg_info and install to be pip compatible.

At a *very* brief scan, pip uses just the following setup.py
invocations (this definitely needs to be properly audited before
relying on it):

For installation from sdist
* setup.py egg_info [--egg-base XXX]
* setup.py install --record XXX [--single-version-externally-managed]
[--root XXX] [--compile|--no-compile] [--install-headers XXX]

For editable installs
* setup.py develop --no-deps

Not sure, used in RequirementSet
* setup.py clean

For pip wheel
* setup.py bdist_wheel -d XXX

Note that installation from wheel requires *no* setup.py interface.
Nearly all of this is for installation from sdist (which long-term is
expected to be deprecated - install via wheels is the intended "way of
the future", and PR #1572 is the first step on the way to that). While
theoretically you can build wheels any way you like, I expect "pip
wheel XXX" to be the canonical approach (it's how PR#1572 works) and
at the moment that means implementing setup.py bdist_wheel.

So, at a bare minimum, you could get away with just supporting
setup.py bdist_wheel (and not supporting editable installs or installs
direct from source). It might need PR #1572 to make this palatable, of
course.

Also, there's the fact (which I glossed over) that pip currently
doesn't run setup.py directly, but does some nasty hackery to inject
setuptools. Before working on standard build interfaces, we probably
need to refactor that out somehow. Maybe a simple flag (that could be
set in setup.cfg) that says "use setup.py without monkeypatching"
would be enough...

Paul