[Python-Dev] PEP 365 (Adding the pkg_resources module)

[Janzert]

Guido van Rossum wrote:
> On Wed, Mar 19, 2008 at 12:54 PM, Phillip J. Eby <pje at telecommunity.com> wrote:
> [a long message]
> 
> I'm back at Google and *really* busy for another week or so, so I'll
> have to postpone the rest of this discussion for a while. If other
> people want to chime in please do so; if this is just a dialog between
> Phillip and me I might incorrectly assume that nobody besides Phillip
> really cares.
> 

Since there seems to be a fair number of negative responses to 
setuptools, I just wanted to add a bit of positive counterbalance. I'm 
just a random python user that happens to track python-dev a bit, so 
take all this with the realization that I probably shouldn't have much 
input into anything. ;)

I've been using python for somewhere around 10 years to write various 
random small scripts, gui applications and recently web applications. 
For me setuptools is the best thing to happen to python since I've been 
using it. I develop and deploy on a seemingly constantly changing mix of 
various flavors of windows and linux. Unlike for others, I love that 
once I get setuptools installed I can just use the same commands to get 
the things I need. I guess the contrast for me is that python is the 
common base that I tend to work from not the underlying OS.

So I don't know if I'm part of a large number of quiet users or just 
happen to be an odd case that works really well with setuptools. I was 
disappointed when setuptools didn't make it into 2.5 and I really hope 
it or something very much like it can make it into a release in the near 
future. Because while setuptools certainly isn't perfect, for me at 
least, it is much, much better than nothing at all.

Brian Haskin