[Distutils] A possible refactor/streamlining of PEP 517

[Paul Moore]

On 4 July 2017 at 08:22, Thomas Kluyver <thomas at kluyver.me.uk> wrote:
> Practical objection: besides it being a VCS checkout, you need the VCS tools
> available (e.g. git on $PATH). It's not hard to imagine cases where this
> doesn't hold, e.g. installing from a directory bind-mounted into a docker
> container. Between this and your case 3 (local directory not a VCS
> checkout), failures - while not common - won't be particularly rare.

Also, the use case of an unpacked sdist isn't all that uncommon. I've
certainly downloaded a sdist (pip download foo is easier than "find
the project homepage, look up the VCS URL, git clone it") and edited
it before building in the past.

Paul